I Will Build My Church
May 22, 2022
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Exodus 40:34-38
34 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lordfilled the tabernacle. 35 And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 36 Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. 37 But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. 38 For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.
Next week I’ll launch our new sermon series in the gospel of John. We won’t finish the series this summer, but we do hope to make it through the first four chapters. They are very, very full chapters. As for our current series, the series we called The Gospel According to Exodus, some nine months after we began, today we come to the twenty-seventh and final sermon in the book. I hope this short sermon will be as encouraging for you to hear as it has been to me to write.
And speaking of encouragement, without any apologies, my aim this morning is to pour into you as much biblical encouragement as God will give us. We have done hard work these nine months. We have preached extensively about our slavery to sin and our need for rescue from God’s punishment. We have preached for hours about the law of God and our failure to keep it. We have preached about our idolatry, that is, the way our hearts put other gods before the real God and how we tend to change the real God into our image.
But now, again, I just want to lay on encouragement, to lay on the gospel according to Exodus. You’ve never met someone too encouraged, someone who says, “I’m filled with all the encouragement I can handle. Just the other week I heard a sermon about the love of God for sinners, and on top of that someone mentioned they liked my shoes. So, you know, I’m filled with all the encouragement I can handle.” Says no one.
And even if we were filled with all the encouragement we could handle, you leak. Gospel encouragement tends to leak out from us—some of us faster than others.
* * *
On May 25, 1961, so just about six-one years ago to the day, President Kennedy “stood before Congress and proposed that the [United States] ‘should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth’” (per The Kennedy Center). Kennedy would die before it happened. But it did happen. A Saturn V rocket launched astronauts into space in July of 1969. A few days later, on July 21 specifically, men walked on the moon. And a few days later, they all returned. If you’re in your mid-to late-sixties, you would have been young when it happened, but you might remember Kennedy’s speech. And in if you’re in your mid- to late-fifties, you would have been young when it happened, but you might remember the “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
I don’t know one-tenth of the challenges the United States faced in carrying out Kennedy’s commitment. I do know the 1960s were a time of great upheaval. There were wars and rumors of war, protests, the sexual revolution, and race-based violence, just to name a few challenges. From my limited understanding, it seems like there were plenty of reasons to quit and fail.
It’s a poor representation, but, in some ways, it—the Kennedy speech, the decade to the moon and back: it—can help us understand the book of Exodus. We read the verse in the service already, but I’ll read again Exodus 3:12. Through a fiery bush that doesn’t burn, God speaks to Moses, saying, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” When God tells Moses that he’s not even in Egypt. Moses is in the wilderness, and all two million of God’s people are enslaved in Egypt. And, oh, by the way, they are enslaved by the most powerful man on earth, who is ruling the most powerful nation on earth.
But then Moses comes back to Egypt. God sends the plagues. And the Israelites leave. When they leave, God declares it to be for them the first day of the new year in a new calendar (Ex. 12:2). Three months later, they come to this mountain (19:1). And they stay here for nine months (40:2, 17), building all that will be built for the God who is who he is. If you remember, I mentioned that the people of God couldn’t pull an “all-nighter” to build everything at the end of a semester. They work nine months, and now, on the first day of the second year, God’s word to Moses from Exodus 3:12 comes true. Not only has God brought them to himself, bearing them on eagle’s wings, taking them out of the strong hand of Egypt so that they might worship him on this mountain, but also God brings his presence to them. God brings them out, so he can come close.
And he does this so that they would know that God is God. That’s the phrase we came back to again and again, isn’t it? Throughout the book of Exodus, a phrase so often repeated, a phrase so weighty and prominent, that theologians have given the phrase the name the “recognition formula.” The recognition formula goes like this: “then he will know” or “then they will know” or “then you will know.” God says, “When I do this, and when I do that, then you will know.” Know what—what will we know? “Then you will know,” God says, “that I am God” (e.g., 6:7; 9:13–16; 14:18). This recognition formula occurs nearly twenty times.
Everything God does in the book of Exodus is so that you would recognize that God is God. All of the events in Exodus—from the baby in the basket floated down the Nile River, to a fiery bush that doesn’t burn, and to Moses and to the plagues and the angel of death passing over the homes with door jambs painted in blood and to the parting of the Red Sea and the closing of the Red Sea, the food on the ground called Manna, the pillar of fire, the giving of the law, and the building of all that would be built for the proper worship of the God who is who he is—all of this was done so that people would know God is God.
And it wasn’t just, as we pointed out recently, that God saved his people from the Egyptians. God must save Israelites from Israelites. For the last two weeks, we talked about the debacle that was the golden calf. And now, after chapters 32, 33, and 34, the people have a renewed sense of obedience, a willingness to respond to God’s grace. We didn’t read this today, but we see their obedience highlighted all throughout chapters 35–40. They bring offerings of gold for the ark of the covenant and for the material for the tabernacle and for fine linen garments for the priests, and all that had to be made, bringing so much that Moses has to tell them to stop giving stuff (36:2–7). After they bring the material, they build it all. And at the end of nine months, Moses instructs them to have it all assembled. And they do everything, word for word, as the Lord commanded. In fact, that’s the phrase that’s used over and over again in chapter 40: as the Lord commanded. It’s used seven times (vv. 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 32). And when they finish, God shows up. Look again at our passage. I’ll start at the end of v. 33.
. . . So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys. (Ex. 40:33b–38)
As we finish Exodus, you might have the same feeling you have as watch a season of a show. You come to the end and think, Hey, they’re setting me up for a sequel. And Exodus does. The sequel is Leviticus and Numbers, but to explore the sequel would take us into a different sort of sermon. But I will mention that the imagery of smoke and fire and the cloud of the glory of the Lord makes me think that the metaphor of a Saturn V rocket is a good one. After months of preparation, the rocket is assembled on the launch pad and the astronauts climb aboard the rocket. There’s t minus nine months, and then t minus nine days, then t minus nine minutes, then you count down the seconds. The ground starts to shake, and the rocket goes up. Except here, as soon as the tabernacle is finished, God comes down.
One scholar writes, “There is no break between verses 33 and 34 . . . . We could easily translate, ‘No sooner had Moses finished the work than the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.’ It’s as if,” writes this scholar, “God could not wait to be where he had wanted to be all along—in the midst of his people” (Wright, Exodus, 610).
There are lots of things you can’t wait for. Maybe you can’t wait for school to get out. For others, you can’t wait to graduate. For others, you can’t wait to go on vacation or can’t wait to retire. It seems that with even greater expectation, God was eager to come down with his people. Do you know God’s eagerness? You should. The story of Jesus coming to earth, is the outworking of God’s eagerness.
And the people do want him near. A few years ago, do you remember how excited Harrisburg got when we thought Amazon would move some of their business operations here and the blessing it would have been to Harrisburg? Here, the God of the universe, the God who brought them out of Egypt, the God who loves them is among them.
There’s something picturesque about it, too. God is dwelling among them. We read, where they go, he goes. Where he goes, they go. It’s as if it was meant to be. Because it is. And the dwelling of God among them is a reality they could have never imagined accomplishing apart from God.
As we close the book, we need to see the encouragement that Exodus offers. We have more than an academic interest in this book; we have a personal interest (a line from a Mark Dever sermon). The same God who delivered them and dwelled with them, is the same God who delivers us and dwells with us. The encouragement from the book of Exodus is that God can do what he says. He told Moses, “You will worship me on this mountain.” And they do. All the obstacles that were against them from the outside and all the obstacles that were against them from the inside could not stop God from keeping his promises and dwelling among them.
I think of the way older saints describe God and their Christian life. “Yeah,” an older, mature Christian might say, “I did some good things. I served in my church, was faithful to God in my singleness, even led a few people to the Lord, ran an honorable business, and did all that… yeah, yeah, yeah,” they say. “But—BUT—my story is that God carried me. If you knew,” they will say, “the sin and the struggles, if you knew the setbacks, if you knew the times I wanted to give up, indeed, I did give up a few times, and the Lord had to resurrect me and did resurrect me—if you knew all this, then you would know my story is not about what I did but what God did. The Lord is merciful and gracious,” they say, “slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
That’s how older saints talk. That’s how the people of Exodus talked. That’s how we should talk. And if you are a Christian, that’s how, one day, you will talk. Because the God of Exodus is the same God who promised, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). Those are words of Jesus to his disciples. They remind me of Exodus 3:12: “You will worship me on this mountain.” I will build my church, Jesus says. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against my church. That’s a promise.
You might feel like your life is going to hell. And to be honest, you might feel like your soul is going to hell. You might feel that way because it’s true. Hell is a real place, and outside of Jesus, that’s where sin will lead you. You need Jesus. You need his forgiveness and his redemption and his rescue from sin and death and evil. And you’ve never received it, but you can. Today.
Some of you might feel like your life is going to hell, and you’re not. Your life is just really hard. I don’t know one-tenth of the struggles but you do, and your life is hard because of sin around you. It’s hard because of sin within you.
And it might just be hard right now for some of you because you’re doing really really good things for God’s glory, and Satan hates that.
And you need—really all of us need—to hear that God loves you too. You need to hear that God is not done with you, and he never will be. He will build his church, and that includes you, if you are in his church, which is to say, if you are believing in Jesus.
Be encouraged that the gospel according to Exodus is the gospel according to the Bible.
Let’s pray . . .
Discussion Questions:
What have been some of your most memorable moments from the series in the book of Exodus?
Can you retell some of the hard things that happened to the people of God throughout the book? If it helps, just flip through the pages of Exodus to be reminded.
What hard things are happening in your life? What might God be teaching you in these hard things?
Benjamin said at the end of the sermon that “the gospel according to Exodus is the gospel according to the Bible.” What did he mean by this, and why should it be encouraging?
