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We begin our study this evening by reading from the book of Exodus and chapter uh twenty four. Book of Exodus, chapter twenty four. While you find the place, let me say that if you are disposed to do any homework to prepare for Monday's lecture, then the passage to read for Monday would be chapter thirty two. It is an exciting story, and if you can resist reading any more than chapter thirty two, well, I suppose you must. Some of you won't be able to do that. Uh, be careful, you might find yourself at the end of chapter thirty four before you knew where you were.
But anyway, if you could manage to read chapter uh thirty two, you would do well. Now we read this evening from Exodus chapter twenty four. And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the Lord, thou and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship ye afar off. And Moses alone shall come near unto the Lord, but they shall not go up with him. And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments, and all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do.
And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning and builded an altar under the mount, and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant and read in the audience of the people. And they said, all that the Lord hath spoken will we do and be obedient.
And Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words. Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were, the very heaven for clearness. Upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand, and they beheld God and did eat and drink.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount and be there, and I will give thee the tables of stone, and the law and the commandment which I have written, that thou mayest teach them. And Moses rose up, and Joshua his minister, and Moses went up into the mountain of God, and he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us until we come again unto you. And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whosoever hath a cause, let him come near unto them. And Moses went up into the mount, and the cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days.
And the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud, and the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. Moses entered into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mount, and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel that they take for me an offering of every man whose heart maketh him willing, you shall take my offering. And this is the offering which you shall take of them, gold and silver and copper and blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen and goat's hair and ram skins dyed red and seals skins and acacia wood, oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the sweet incense, onyx stones and stones to be set for the ephod and for the breastplate.
And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them, according to all that I show thee, the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even so shall you make it. Verse seventeen: and thou shalt put a mercy seat of pure gold thereof, and a cubit and a, uh, uh, of pure gold, two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubim of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them at the two ends of the mercy seat, and make one cherub at the one end and one cherub at the other end.
Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on the two ends thereof. The cherubim shall spread out their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, with their faces one to another. Toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark, and in the ark thou shalt give the testimony that I shall give thee. And there will I meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.
Now let us take time to read a passage from the New Testament to serve as a commentary upon those verses. The Epistle to the Hebrews, beginning in chapter eight. The Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter eight. and verse six. But now he, that is our Lord, has obtained a ministry the more excellent, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted upon better promises.
For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second. For finding fault with them, he says, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt. For they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Judah after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their mind, and on their heart also will I write them, and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.
And they shall not teach every man his fellow citizen and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. In that he saith a new covenant, he hath made the first old. But that which is becoming old and waxeth aged is nigh unto vanishing away. Now, even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service, and its sanctuary, a sanctuary of this world, for there was a tabernacle prepared.
God interpret his word and cause us to understand it. We spent our last occasion together considering the goal of redemption, the goal that God had in mind when he delivered his people Israel from slavery in Egypt. And we found that that goal was not Palestine, the land of Canaan, with all its milk and honey, glorious as that land was as an inheritance. The goal was nothing other than God himself.
We observed how God came down from his heaven and stationed himself in his condescension upon Mount Sinai, that he might make that point explicitly to Israel. You have seen, said he, as he stood amidst the thunder and the fire of Mount Sinai, you have seen what I have done unto the Egyptians, how I have carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Of course, that does not mean that he had given up upon the idea of bringing them at length to their glorious inheritance in Canaan.
That was still his intention. But long before they should reach Canaan and enjoy its particular blessings, they were to know this goal of their redemption stationed in their midst while they still traveled across the sand of the desert. God himself come down to meet them. The God who had redeemed them and protected them from his wrath in Egypt, now come down to meet them and receive them. Himself the goal of their redemption. Then we noticed that in order to achieve the present enjoyment of that goal, God himself made two propositions.
He offered Israel that they were to enter into covenant with him. He was to become their Lord, their husband, as well as their redeemer. And therefore he offered them a relationship that was to be secure, a relationship guaranteed by a covenant, that they might be in no doubt as to his intention, that there might no be no fear in their hearts that his proposals were fickle, that having brought them so far, he would thereafter abandon them. He offered them a covenant that the relationship between him and his people might be securely based and ratified by the blood of the covenant sacrifice.
He offered them too that he would come and dwell among them. Not only would he be their lord and sovereign, but he would dwell among them and journey with them. So it wouldn't be merely that while he waited for them at the other end of the journey, they were to journey as best they could across the wilderness and eventually find their way to the promised land where he would greet them. It was that God himself would come down and walk with them, travel with them, journey with them, and share their experiences as he personally led them by the cloud and fire of his presence every mile of that desert journey, until at last he entered Canaan with them and brought them to their destiny.
And for that purpose, they were invited to make him a sanctuary that he might dwell among them, and as he journeyed with them, have a place whither he might invite them to come and share fellowship with him. How glorious that would make the wilderness pathway, I need not at this moment stay to describe. Wildernesses are wildernesses, and there's very little you can do about them. There's no sense thinking that you can plant a few shrubberies in a wilderness and make them anything less than a wilderness than they are. Wildernesses will be wildernesses, they always have, they always will be, and it can be hot and thirsty and tiring work to foot slog your way across them.
But whatever the difficulties of the journey would be, there would be a certain glory cast upon it, and the pain would go out of it, and the difficulty and labor would seem much less. As Israel journeyed with God himself in their midst, God himself journeying with them, God himself sharing their toils and sharing their travels. I say the glory of God in that tabernacle would cast a certain glory and a radiance even over the desert. There would come days when Israel, after a foot slog across that wilderness, would sit in their camp doors at night and see that glory hovering over the tent of the tabernacle, and they would scarce know whether they were still on earth in a desert, or whether perchance they had been wafted in spirit to some far distant inheritance.
So real would the presence and the glory of God be in their midst. It would be a kind of taking heaven to heaven with them. That, then, was God's proposal. So that tonight we ought to stop for a while and examine in more detail those two elements in this relationship that now God proposed, on the one side his covenant, and on the other side his tabernacle. You will see how it is in the record they come together, in Exodus twenty four the covenant, and in Exodus twenty five the tabernacle. And you will see how in the New Testament they likewise come together.
For Hebrews chapter eight talks about the new covenant that God has made to replace the old, and having talked of that new covenant, immediately Hebrews chapter nine goes on to talk about the tabernacle. Let us think of those two twin things. What then was this covenant? Well, we have already, in our previous study, likened it to the covenant relationship that in the ancient world a marriage was. We can help ourselves again if we remember that in the ancient world, covenants were also instruments of government.
Nowadays, thanks to the archaeologists, we know a lot more about covenants in the ancient world than once upon a time we did. Israel's near neighbors, for instance, the Canaanites, were very much used to covenants. Archaeologists have uncovered scores and scores of ancient records of covenants made in particular between emperors and their vassal kings. People like Suppiluliumu, for instance, the great emperor, was in the habit of making covenant agreements with, uh, his vassal king subjects.
Allow me for a moment to digress and tell you a little bit about those covenants, and you will, I think, see the relevance to our own topic presently. When an emperor, like the aforementioned, uh, Canaanite, had vassal kings and was concerned that those vassal kings obeyed themselves and went about their life and their politics obediently to the emperor, then they would try to secure the vassals' obedience by issuing a covenant, and the covenant would run after a certain formula. It would start off by announcing the identity of the great emperor. I am Supiluliumu, whoever he was.
And then it would proceed to say what the great emperor had done for his subjects. You know, I have generally bashed you up and beaten you and done various other things to you. And then in the third place it would say, and now your bounden duty is this, you shall not have any other emperors apart from me. None of this business of going making covenants with any other kings and, uh, getting up to crafty political moves behind my back. Thou shall have no other emperor but me. And then it would proceed to list all the things that the vassal king must do and be obedient. All the thou shalts. And then it would add all the things that the vassal king mustn't do, all the thou shalt not.
It would, moreover, pronounce curses on the man, uh, and all his subjects if this vassal king were to disobey. And presently it would, uh, lay down that the covenant document had to be housed in some secure place. And then it would say that from time to time the vassal king was to take out the covenant document from its secure place and read it in the ears of the people, that the people might from time to time be reminded of the stipulations within the covenant and not only obey their immediate vassal king, but obey through him the great emperor himself.
And it would call the gods to witness that the covenant had been made, and what would be the curses and the disasters that should overtake anybody who disobeyed it. And I dare say, as I have rehearsed the outward formula of those ancient Near Eastern covenants between the emperors and their vassal subjects, your minds have been working fast, and you have been saying to yourself, but that's extraordinarily like Exodus chapter twenty. Yes, it is. Of course it is. For Exodus chapter twenty begins like this. God himself now, not some great Canaanite emperor, but God himself, first of all saying, I am the Lord your God, announcing his identity.
And in the second place, proceeding to say what he had done for Israel. I am the Lord your God that brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. And therefore, and in the third place, like those other covenants saying, thou shalt have no other God but me. And then, of course, as you know well, in the ten words, there come the thou shalts, the positive commands, and the thou shalt nots, the prohibitions. You will remember that in other books of the Pentateuch, there come likewise the solemn pronouncements of the curses on Israel if they were to break that covenant, and likewise the happy pronouncement of all the glorious blessings that would come upon them if they kept the covenant.
And heaven and earth are called to witness at the end of Deuteronomy that God has made a covenant with Israel and how he will bless them if they keep it and curse them if they break it. And then finally we are told, why in our very text we are told it tonight, that God directed that when that covenant was made, Moses was to take the tables of the covenant, and he was to build a sanctuary, and in that sanctuary an ark, on purpose that he might store in that ark the tables of the covenant. That ark was to be their depository, where the covenant between God and his people should abide, the very center and terms of his relationship with them, the instrument of his government of them.
And Deuteronomy provides that from time to time, the kings of Israel should eventually take out that covenant, and they should rehearse it in the ears of the people. And one such great and famous occasion is described to us in Ex- in Deuteronomy, in its final chapters, where we are told that just before Israel entered into the land, Moses, the man of God, rehearsed in their ears with much sermon and much exhortation, he rehearsed again in their ears the great covenant that God had made with them at Mount Sinai, and pleaded with Israel to observe the terms of that covenant, that it might be well with them when they entered the land.
Here then is a covenant, God making a covenant with Israel, in the manner that the great emperor made a covenant with his vassal subjects. As God stood upon a Sinai's top, was looking forward to taking Israel across that wilderness out into the promised land. God, first of all, made steps to secure their obedience and their allegiance to him. How should he not? When we come to the New Testament, we find the New Testament repeating it in our ears. Certainly we are not under that old covenant, but we are under a covenant.
Saint Peter himself remarks, does he not, in his first epistle in chapter one, how that we are elect, we whom he subsequently describes as those that have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. We are elect, he says, and we are elect unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. You notice the coming together of the two terms, obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. For the holy apostle has in his mind the background of Exodus twenty four, where Israel stood under the mount and God offered them the terms of his covenant and said, Moses, make it clear to them and write it in a book and put the proposition to the people, will they accept my covenant?
Will they obey my covenant? Will they keep its terms? And the people made answer, all that the Lord has commanded we will do and be obedient. And upon their saying they would obey, Moses took the book of that covenant and the blood of the sacrifice, and he sprinkled the book, and he sprinkled the people. Evidence, the signing and the sealing of that covenant that now the people were making with God, and God with the people as they promised him their obedience. He did it at Sinai's Mount. This was not some deep, some far off eventual experience that Israel were led into when they had matured after some centuries of experience.
This was an experience right on the threshold of the desert. God making his covenant and claiming their obedience, that then he might lead them on towards their inheritance. And Saint Peter, as I say, reminds us that we stand as Christians in similar obligation to obey the Lord. We have been called to a great inheritance. Between us and that inheritance there stretches a desert. We're not home yet. Our Lord it is that has the responsibility of seeing us through the pilgrimage, through the desert, and bringing us home at last.
Therefore, at the beginning of our sojourn, he lays it down straight before us. He offers us a covenant. It is the new covenant, admittedly not the old, but in that covenant he is asking for our obedience. We have been elect unto the obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. You will say to me, of course, but you know, Mr. Preacher, our new covenant is far better than the old covenant was, and is so, so much better that in one sense it is altogether different. And I could not agree with you more, of course, the New Covenant is better and is different.
On its details, we shall, God willing, speak another night. Tonight, therefore, let me merely stay to point out the fact that it is different, because there are many people still, though this is the year of the grace of our Lord, nineteen seventy seven. there are still many people who seem not yet to have seen that there is a difference between the old covenant and the new. So just let's remind ourselves that there is a difference, and the difference is this, that that old covenant was a two-party thing, an agreement between God and Israel, that if Israel performed such and such and such requirements, then God would in his turn bless them and be their God.
But similarly, if Israel broke the terms of that covenant and failed in their obedience, then God would be set free from his obligation to bless them, and under the terms of that covenant, would be entitled to curse them. It was a two-party thing, therefore, in which Israel had something to fulfill, and God had something to fulfill. And all Israel's blessing, in the last analysis, would depend on their own fulfilling of the terms of that covenant. And of course they broke it.
And in the end they broke it, impossibly they broke it. Broke it beyond all possibility of repair and patching up. And God disregarded them. That is to say, he brought down upon them the curses that were written in the book of the law and disowned them as his people. Our covenant is infinitely better and different, is it not? Else it would be with very sad and doubtful hearts that we sat here this evening. For we're not yet home, we're not yet in our inheritance, and if we thought that our relationship with God was no more secure than Israel's was, we should be a gloomy people indeed.
We should say to ourselves, but then we are no better than Israel. And if Israel couldn't keep the terms of the covenant, what hope have we to keep the terms of the covenant? And if when they broke the covenant, God cast them off, could it not happen to us as well that we should fail in our obligations and God would cast us off too? It is therefore with tremendous relief that we hear that eventually that old covenant was scrapped, and it was God who scrapped it, and that old covenant was replaced by a new covenant. That glorious covenant instituted by Jesus Christ, our Lord, when he took the cup and said, this is the blood of the new covenant is shed for the remission of sin.
Wherein is that new covenant different, you say? Well, in many respects, but just for tonight, think, let us think of the basic one. The old covenant was a two-party covenant. The new party is a, uh, the new covenant is a one-party covenant. Now here I must vex you with legal matters, though I shall not charge you like the lawyers normally do. You can be relieved at that as well. There is a vast difference, isn't there, between a two-party covenant and a one-party covenant. You want a house built, you make a contract with the builder.
He builds you your house, you pay him the money. That's the scheme. So if need be, you write it into a covenant and come to an agreement that he's got to build the house to these specifications, and if he does his part, you do your part, and you pay him up the hundred thousand pounds or whatever it be. He does his part, you do your part. If he doesn't do his part rightly, well, then you can sue him at law. And if you don't do your part rightly in paying the bill, he doesn't give you the house. That's a two-party covenant, and many people there are that think salvation is like that.
I do my bit, and God does his. I obey his law and keep the the law as best I can, and so long as I do it moderately well, then God will respond by giving me his salvation. That's the old covenant, however. And if I speak to anybody who still imagines that salvation is like that, let me tell you with delight that you are some two or three thousand years out of date. Salvation isn't like that anymore. Salvation now proceeds not under an old covenant, but under a new covenant. And the new covenant is a one-party covenant.
A one-party covenant, if you want a modern illustration, is a will. I've not had the good fortune yet to be left in anybody's will, though there's always a chance where I'm not dead yet myself, but the chances are getting very thin. But they who have ever been left in wills know that they can be marvelous things to be left in. You get a notice one of these morning from some obscure solicitor saying that if you'll report to his office, he has something to tell you to your advantage, and you go along and find that some wealthy millionaire uncle of yours in California, whom you never knew, has died, and that left you oodles of money and his ranch as well.
And of course, you hurry yourself down to the solicitors, and you can't keep your eyes off the paper, and you read it through and read it again, and the more complicated it is, the more you like it. You don't say that was a long, long will. Do you know it took the man an hour and a quarter to read it? I shan't go down to that solicitor's office anymore. The man went on and on and on and on. No, I shan't go down anymore. I don't want to hear a long thing like that. No, you wouldn't mind if it went on two hours or three, so long as the details get coming up of all the marvelous things that had been left you in this will. And among the most marvelous of the lot would be this, that if in that will it said he just left it to you, that you didn't have to deserve it or earn it or buy it or purchase it, but you just had to come along and say thank you very much and take it.
Oh, what a glorious thing it would be. Of course, if you wanted to, you could say to the solicitor, nonsense, I know the likes of you, always making up these silly bits of paper and charging a lot of money for them. I don't believe you. And you could throw the thing back in his face. You could do it if you wanted to. I don't know many people who would. But if you wanted it, ah, what a lovely thing you could just, um, go and take it. And the glorious thing would be that if it was a will that had made you these provisions, nobody could cheat you of it. Because that's the idea of having a will, that it was drawn up and signed and sealed and settled and witnessed.
And once it is sealed, no man addeth thereto or takes away therefrom. Yours by covenant. Yours by legal covenant. But this time, a one-party covenant. For the man who signed it would just be your wealthy uncle. You wouldn't have to sign it. All you have to do is to take the benefit. And so when it came to the new covenant, our blessed Lord made it abundantly clear that it differs from the old covenant in this precise particular, that the old covenant was a two-party thing.
The new covenant, a one-party. He took the cup, it was his own blood, symbol of his own blood, and with his own blood and sacrifice, he sealed to all who trust him the incalculable blessings of God's redemption. And all we have to do as bankrupt sinners is to come and take those blessings free, independent of our merit, unearned, unpurchased, to take them free, blessings guaranteed to us by the New Covenant.
For the New Covenant is a kind of will. In the Hebrew tongue and in the Greek tongue, they use the same word for a will and a covenant anyway. But the New Covenant is such a distinctive thing of our Christian salvation that Christians call the books that have come down to them as Christians as inspired. They call them that, the New Testament, the New Will, the new covenant, if you like. For this is the very heart of our salvation. This is what all the good news is about, that God has written out a new covenant in Jesus Christ and given it to all who trust the Savior.
On another occasion, I say we shall have to think in slightly more detail of its term. But tonight we ought to address ourselves to another question. You say, well, now look, if that Old Testament, if that Old Covenant, that Old Testament was broken because Israel couldn't keep it. Did God know beforehand they couldn't keep it? And if he did, as it is obvious he did, how did he give it to them? Mister Preacher, come tell us.
If God himself knew that the Old Testament people couldn't keep that first covenant, and that one day he would have to make a new covenant, why on earth did he give it to them? Wasn't it a waste of time, and wasn't it unrealistic? Didn't he realize how failing they were, how feeble, how impossible it would be for them to keep the covenant and earn his salvation? Why then did he give it to them? That's a very sensible question. It has two answers, among others, and the first one of them is this, that though Isra- though God knew that they couldn't keep it, Israel didn't.
And the only way Israel would ever find out that they couldn't and really come to believe that they couldn't was to discover by experience they couldn't. Ah yes, they'd had some difficult experiences in the wilderness already. But you know, there is an almost incurable pride in the human heart that imagines always that it is better than it is. An incurable pride in its own abilities and its own self-sufficiencies. And not until that pride is cured and broken, and man comes to face the realities of his bankrupt spiritual position.
Not till then will man really be delivered and ready for those deeper depths of God's salvation. And therefore, God himself had to let Israel find out. You will observe it if you attend closely to the text of Exodus twenty four. Says God to Moses, now I propose to make a covenant with this people. Moses, go down and tell them. So Moses went down and told them all the words that the Lord had spoken, all his detailed commands, all his detailed prohibitions. And in God's name, he said to Israel, now Israel, would you be prepared to enter a covenant with God like that?
That God is prepared to be your God and to bless you if you keep all those details, or if you break them, then you bring down upon your head God's curse. Now, what about it, Israel? Will you have a relationship with God built on such a covenant? And Israel said, why, of course, of course, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, of course. Why not? Oh, yes, all that the Lord has commanded we will do and be obedient. So Moses reported it to God. God said, uh, Moses, um, look, just a minute, Moses. I think you better write it in a book, haven't you? We'll have it in black and white, Moses.
I mean, hearsay today, you know, word of mouth, spur of the moment stuff. Yes, the people mean well, perhaps they haven't quite realized what's all involved. Moses, write it in a book, Moses. We'll have it in black and white, and we'll have it in all the detail, large print and small print as well. And Moses, now get the people together again, and this time, Moses, read the book to them. It's in black and white, look. Can't you see what you're promising to do? Can't you read the details and the small print? You break this covenant, God will curse you. Your whole relationship with God depends on your keeping your bar- part of the bargain.
Will you do it when you have relationship on those terms? Look, it's in the print. The people responded just as eagerly as they did before, but yes, what's all the fuss, Moses? Of course we will, of course we can, and we shall, and all the Lord has spoken will we do. And you of I and I, who have seen the centuries go by and have known our own hearts, I suspect we tremble a little bit as we hear Israel in their comparative innocence talking like that. How little they knew their hearts. How little they could foresee the history that was to be yet down the centuries.
So finally Moses went up to God, and God himself with his own finger wrote the summary of that covenant in the ten words of the law. Israel made a covenant on those terms. It was scarce made, but what it was broken. The rest of Israel's history, until such time as our blessed Lord instituted the new covenant. The rest of Israel's history is a very checkered lesson, showing how they disregarded God's covenant and broke it, and not only broke it accidentally, but so very often broke it deliberately, and how God was obliged to chastise them and to bring his curse upon them.
Till at length the lesson had been written in writing that nobody could possibly mistake or misunderstand. There can be no salvation on the terms of that old covenant. There can be no buying of salvation now or buying of heaven hereafter on the basis of man's own effort to keep God's holy law. See it writ large in Israel's history and learn therefrom the abysmal incompetence of the human heart. So Israel had to discover their own bankruptcy, and for that reason were given that first covenant.
And when she should have discovered her need and her impossibility of finding salvation on those terms, she might be ready, along with her Gentile neighbors. Now emptied of all pride, now emptied of all feeling of superiority over anybody else. Israel, I say, God's favored Israel might be brought to the point where, bankrupt like the Gentiles, she was prepared along with the Gentiles to accept the new covenant and God's salvation totally by grace. That's one answer to your question.
But the other answer to your question is this, that though that old covenant was, so to speak, inadequate, it could not bring perfection. Nevertheless, it had adjoined to it a tabernacle. Did your ear pick up what the New Testament writer was saying in Hebrews chapter uh nine? The writer there has just observed that the new covenant that we Christians enjoy is a far better covenant than the old covenant. Thank God for it.
But then he adds that though the old covenant wasn't so good as the new covenant, yet even, even, even the old covenant had a sanctuary. Why, yes, of course it did. It had a sanctuary and systems of sacrifice to go with it, for God was no unrealist. He would have to be teaching Israel a lesson, and a long lesson it would be, and it would take centuries. While the nation as a whole discovered the abysmal blackness of sin, and sin became exceedingly sinful.
But meanwhile, he had individual people to think about, and succeeding generations to think about. And what about them? And what about their needs? And what about their personal relationship with God? When in human weakness they sinned and displeased God, did he just abandon them forthwith? Why, of course not. Even though they stood under that inadequate old covenant, even the old covenant had a sanctuary and a system of divine worship, of course it did. Why, let's start there at the very beginning, and with that literal generation in the wilderness, God was proposing to take them across the wilderness to their promised inheritance, and how should he ever get them there?
Ah, more than that. Have we not just heard how God came down to Sinai to explain to those people? Look, I have brought you on eagle's wings, and I brought you to myself. And he meant it. This was no vague typology that didn't apply to them, but would one day apply to the Christian church. It was to them spoken as well, and he meant it. Those folks in the wilderness, God was to be their goal, and be their goal right now. With them, he offered a personal relationship on the terms of those covenant, and listen, to them too, in the goodness of his heart, he offered a tabernacle where he might dwell with them.
He wanted them, loved them. They were not just counters, pictures in an album for the benefit and instruction of Christians. They were real people. And insofar as was possible, God longed for an experience of them and to give them an experience of him. Not when at last they got into Canaan and Solomon should arise and build a temple in all its magnificence, but now on the desert sand, God would come down and form his relationship with them and know them and let them come to know him as best they could and meet with them.
You say, how it is possible? How is it possible? Poor, broken, feeble, erring people that they were. How should they in that wilderness maintain any significant and real relationship with the living God. Well, I'll tell you how. Even the first covenant had a tabernacle and vessels of divine service, for the divine ingenuity was not hard up for finding a way and a means whereby those pilgrim people, ex-slaves, might enjoy his company as they traveled home to Egypt, to Tuchanian.
As we read it, we shall be struck by two things. The tremendous grace of God himself to that ancient people. Then, as we think of that, we shall, for we shall not be able to help ourselves, we shall be thinking of God's grace to us and the exceeding glory of the favors that we have been given in Christ. Let us therefore pick out some of the main details. Says God, Moses, would you ask the people then to build me a sanctuary, that I might come and dwell among them?
And what shall I build first, Lord? Moses, first you'll build an ark, and in it you'll put the law, and on it you will put a mercy seat. And what for, Lord? Ah, says God. For the purpose for which I want the tabernacle anyway. For there, between those cherubim on the mercy seat, which is above the ark of the testimony, there will I meet with thee.
There will I talk with thee. There will I commune with you. All the lovely ingenuity of God. He would make real to his people this tremendous fact, ex-slaves though they were, that he loved them. He wanted them, wanted their fellowship, and would go to any length to devise means that they might come and meet him, and he talked to them on the way home.
So that Israel might not just be comforted by odd visions, dreams of what should be at last when they got to Canaan. They might know that in their midst they had God alive, real, speaking. A God who could be met. A God who talked to you. Really there. That's why he had the tabernacle. To what volumes it speaks to our heart, doesn't it? Yes, one day, when at length we are home, we hope to see the blessed Lord face to face.
And we don't have to wait until we get home at last to our inheritance before we can meet God. Do we? Where then is that place here on earth? Where then is the spot where I, a traveler from time to eternity, may come and meet God? Oh, let me get it to my heart. Oh, friend, you don't have to wait till you get hound at last of heaven. You don't have to wait until you have crossed your Jordan and gone through death and launched yourself upon eternity until you meet God.
My friend, if you wait then, it could well be that you find yourself unprepared to meet him. Plus for those many thousands of our fellow men and women that wander on through life like that. They've not yet met God. They've not yet heard him personally. He's never spoken to them, nor they to him. They think, if they think at all, that one of these days, when life is done, that perhaps they'll go to some heaven and meet a God somewhere. Oh friend, the reality is vastly different. On this planet, while we yet travel through time, there is a place where a human soul can come and meet its God and be spoken to and seen.
Where is that meeting place? The New Testament talks first of all to the unconverted, so to speak, to the man in his sins, and pointing him to the fact that he can never find salvation by that law of Moses. Next, it points him to that ark that contained the law of Moses, and then next to the mercy seat, that slab of pure gold that covered the ark with the cherubim of glory, and bids him see in his mind's eye that ark and the law and the mercy seat and the cherubim, and then that mercy seat stained red with the blood of the sacrifice of atonement.
And he's got the picture in his mind's eye of that ancient ark and its mercy seat sprinkled with blood, it cries in his ears, my good man. Just as Israel came to that ark and met God, were accepted and forgiven. So now is it possible on earth to meet God? Where? Listen. Our Lord Jesus Christ, whom God has set forth to be a mercy seat, through faith in his blood, to show God's righteousness at this time, so he not only fo- forbore and passed over the sins of previous ages, but can now meet the sinner.
And if the sinner will have it, will come in bankrupt repentance and faith, will justify the man and pronounce him clear and right with God. Jesus Christ set forth to be a mercy to you. The New Testament talks to the believer as well, doesn't it? Ah, let me say it again, though how can we forget? We're not in heaven yet, are we? We're very much in the wilderness. Another week has found us out.
We know our weaknesses ever more deeply. We overcome some of them only to find that some other weakness has defeated us. And painfully we are aware that we're not yet at home with the Lord in our glorious inheritance. And sometimes we say, and shall I ever be there? Then we remember the glorious words of the epistle written by John and its second chapter. If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, and he is the propitiation for our sins.
The learners will already know that that word propitiation is linked in its basic meaning to the mercy seat. It tells us not merely of the place, but of the person who made that great sacrifice. That availing sacrifice that I need as a believer, for oftentimes I sin, and I tell you something else about me. The extent of my spiritual ignorance, I say it with shame, but the extent of my spiritual ignorance is such that I often sin without even knowing I sin. You should see me on times when I, when, when I'm showing off, you know.
I'm better than that man. I'm a better preacher than that fellow, of course, and, and, and, and I think I'm being so marvelously spiritual, and the old pride is rising like the stench of a sewer. I don't even know I'm being found. And how does God put up with me? Well, you can see he's got a lot to do before I'm fit for his presence, can't you, and behave properly in heaven. You wouldn't be very comfortable in heaven if, if I were there not changed considerably, would you? There was me going by, and you've got five or six crowns on your head, and I've got half a little one.
And here me going by as though I owned the place. Well, that would spoil your heaven to start with, wouldn't it? And how does God put up with me even now? Bring me to my senses and put up with me while he's bringing me to my senses. He does it in the same way as he put up with Israel. How did that tabernacle stay with Israel in the wilderness in spite of their uncleannesses? It stayed with them because once in a year there was a great day of atonement, and they brought in the sacrifice and the blood of atonement, and they put it on the mercy seat. The tabernacle was atoned for that God might continue with them in spite of their uncleanness.
And all thank God for that sacrifice of Christ. I'm on my way to God's heaven, and one day I shall be there. You'll say, but there needs a lot of change, my man. I know that. But Christ has paid the expense of it. Paid the price of my spiritual education, made it possible for a holy God to keep on with me and keep bothering with me and staying with me and never letting me go until at last he has me home. If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.
Oh, did you ever hear such a gospel realistically designed to get erstwhile sinners and slaves through this wilderness and home at last to glory? There is a place, a mercy seat. Oh, come to it. There's the New Testament. Therefore, seeing we have such a high priest, let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we might find mercy and grace to help in time of trouble.
Who of us but what has times of troubles. Perhaps I even speak to somebody here tonight, and you are in a similar situation to the people to whom that letter of Hebrews was written. They had so far blotted their copy books that they were thinking of abandoning their Christian profession. They were saying it's no good. Ah, it's no good. We can't stick the page. We've made such a muddle of it. What's the good of us still claiming to be Christians? And the writer writes to them, and he says, but look, you have a high priest, and what is more, you have a throne of grace, you have a mercy seat, and it's a throne of grace, and it's a throne of mercy.
You needn't throw up your Christian profession. Pray, hold fast your confession. Weak, abysmally weak as you may be. But God has made adequate provision for you. Don't give it up. Come boldly to the throne of grace. There to obtain the mercy you need for the past, and the grace that you will need for the way that lies ahead. There are two other major vessels in that tabernacle.
One was a table with bread on, and the other was a lampstand with lamps on. And you say, whatever were they for? Well, they were for presentation. The table held up twelve loaves in the presence of God, before the Lord, as the ancient text cities. And the lampstand held up, uh, lamps to shine before the Lord. You say, yes, I see. Uh, why so? Well, suppose if I came to your home and you were pleased to entertain me, I should find similar things, shouldn't I?
I shouldn't find that you had the electric light bulb on the end of an old lead on the floor. No, you'd find it on some kind of a stand, simple or ornate, according to your taste. I suspect the old lamp would be on a stand so they might give light to all in the house. And I suspect if you were inclined one of these days to invite me to supper, you wouldn't put the food on the floor either. I hope you wouldn't. No, indeed not. You saw the guests coming. Um, I should suspect that the food would be on the table, simple or ornate, according to taste, but you would present the food to me on a table, wouldn't you? And here were Israel, and God had come down among them.
Now that's a problem. How would they entertain God? I mean, bad enough having a preacher come and stay with you, so I'm told, sometimes. But can't even God always. How would you entertain God? So Israel were instructed to put a table they would loath on before the Lord. You say, my man, you're not suggesting, are you, that God had to be fed with food, bread on a table? God doesn't need food, surely. I mean, it's God that makes the food and, and feeds us.
We don't have to feed God. Don't you? Oh, I thought we did. You say, no, my dear man, you've got your typology wrong. Uh, the, that, that bread on the table is a picture of the Lord Jesus, who's the bread of life to us starving sinners, and we come and eat him and are fed. Oh, that's right. I guess I'll have to agree with you on that part. But the Bible does tell me that as well as being all that, the food was put there before the Lord, wasn't it? It was put there a whole week and left there, whole twelve rows of them before the Lord, and nobody touched it for a whole week. It was left before the Lord. Yes, it's true what you say, that at the end of the week the priest came along and ate it.
But that wasn't its prime purpose, was it? For a whole week, it proclaimed its purpose to be presenting the bread to that table before the Lord. You say, but can't think God doesn't need anything to eat. Oh, come, you know better than that, if you would think about it. He doesn't need almost bread to eat, of course not. Let me quote you a New Testament text, and I'll bring you around to my way of thinking at once. Did not our blessed Lord at one stage stand outside the door of a church and say, behold, I stand at the door and knock.
Any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and... I will dine with him, I'll eat my dinner with him, and then he will eat his with me. What did he mean? Of course, no longer as once he did with Mary and Martha, come knocking on their door, and Martha cheerily invited him in and set him down to a well-spread table, and enjoyed his fellowship and conversation as he enjoyed her.
But in a deeper and more intimate and higher sense, risen Lord though he is, he still looks to be entertained by his people and knocks on our heart's door, and coming in expects to see spread, doesn't he, a table of our hearts that he might dine with us and eat with us. If I were your guest for a week, yes, you couldn't always be sitting there, could you, talking to me. You've got your business to do, of course you have. I hope you wouldn't leave me in your best room and never come and talk to me. And we have God dwelling with us.
He expects to be entertained. How can I entertain him? And then I'm conscious it's not what I say because he looks beyond and below and behind what I say, looks to what I am. And looks, I know it in my heart, looks to be satisfied with me, looks to enjoy me, looks to enjoy the way I behave at my work, at my, at my pleasures, at my leisures. Oh, how can I meet his demand? How can I shine before the Lord and glorify him that men might see my works and glorify him?
How can I shine before him? Ah, it would be impossible, wouldn't it? Were it not for this. Israel, much as God loved them, couldn't come very near, and so they had to do theirs with symbols. Instead of twelve tithes, they took twelve loaves of bread, and they wanted to present them before the Lord, for the Lord to enjoy them, so to speak. They couldn't just be left on the floor. They were told to make a table that could carry them and present them before God.
I turn to my New Testament and inquire what is the goal of my salvation and why am I saved? The Epistle to the Ephesians tells me why I'm saved. It is God's electing good pleasure. He has chosen me in Christ before the foundation of the world, that I should be holy and without blame before him. That's why he's chosen me. That forever and forever I shall be before him, and he be able to look upon me with satisfaction and delight and enjoyment.
That's why he made me in the first place. Now he has redeemed me, wants to set me before his face. And I say to myself, yes, that's already, that's all right, God. One of these days, when your work is finished and I'm home at last with the Lord, perhaps you'll find satisfaction in me. And the word comes, no, but long before then, while you're still on the desert sand, I want you to be before me. You say, how is it possible, Lord? And the answer comes back, my good man, I've, I've done it.
It was my intention that you should be before me. Now I've done it, and the thing is done. For even as I chose you, I have blessed you in Christ. I raised him from the dead and set him at my right hand, and in raising him there and putting him there, I put you there. I can't stress believe it, can you? And yet it's true. As true as that table took those no's and presented them before God to his satisfaction, so this very night, the blessed Savior has taken those who trust him, and he himself presents them before God and holds them before God to the satisfaction and joy of Almighty God, now and forever.
So on the desert sands, in Christ, God's great purpose is being done. This humble believer and that believer, presented in the gold of the person and the character and the worth and the redemption of Christ, is held before God. God already can accept them, find something to delight in. While we journey towards heaven.
You know what the secret of it all was, was an altar and a laver and an altar of incense. And I need not elaborate how that they tell us the secret of God's ways with us now, Calvary, Pentecost, and the present ministry of our Lord's intercession. But one thing I must say, and then we shall close. God's provision for Israel, however hastily I have sketched it, surely has shown me how realistic God was. He wanted their fellowship in the wilderness, and even the first covenant had a sanctuary that did actually make possible, to a certain degree, Israel's fellowship with God.
But in it all, there was one thing they never could do. So the text reminds us. God dwelt among them, for sure, but he dwelt behind the curtain. And only once in a year, the solitary high priest could penetrate the curtain and come into the presence of God. Those days have long since passed. The Lord Jesus has come. The new covenant has been instituted. We have a tabernacle more glorious indeed. It is being built now out of all those who trust the Savior. One day it shall adorn eternity as a finally erected and permanent building of that eternal tabernacle and temple.
Even now on this desert sand, we can do what Israel never did. We can enter the holiest of all. And as I said, I begin to sense that my geography is, is, is getting a little bit unearthly. God with me, here on the desert sand, my very body, the assembly of which I'm a member, the temple of the Holy Ghost, God with us. Yet I say to myself, that holiest of all, I know where it was with Israel, it was on the desert sand, wasn't it?
But the holiest of all, into which I may enter, where is it? You say, ah, but my man, the holiest of all is the immediate presence of God. It is his very most inner heaven. Oh, I say, not on the desert sand then. You mean it's in he- in heaven where my inheritance is? You say, yes. I said, now that's, that's a curious thing. Explain it, can you? Here I am. I'm not in heaven, am I? And how shall we answer?
Hi, this very night you sit on these seats. You don't want me to tell you this isn't heaven, they're hard, those seats. The seats aren't going to be hard in heaven, however long heaven lasts. You're on the desert sand. Weren't you this day sometime lifting your spirit to God? And in virtue of the blood of Christ, you came boldly to the mercy seat, and you entered. Pray, tell me, where did you enter? You say, I entered through the veil, and with spirit I made contact with God, and he with me.
I say, what a wonderful thing. On earth, in heaven, simultaneously. I tell you what, as as Paul put it, you shall attain, can't you? You shall attain the glory of the Lord, as certain as you sit here believing in the Savior, so certain shall you one day attain the glory of the Lord. You shall enter in, bodily you shall enter in. While bodily you're not yet there, in spirit you already have right and ability to run ahead, to enter in and feel yourself at home with the Lord.
Oh, marvelous salvation. I said it's a kind of taking heaven with heaven. Shall we pray? Then, Lord, we pray that by thy spirit thou wilt take thy holy word that we have read and attempted to think about. Wilt thou please take it and make it by thy spirit's interpretation real and meaningful to our hearts. That it shall not only be interesting to our minds and provoking to our imagination, reaching deeper to our spirits, shall provoke in them that faith that links us with thee, and increase that faith, so that even now we take hold more readily and more meaningfully of the great provision thou has given us, and come ever and again boldly to the throne of grace, and find fellowship with thee.
Even as we do so, rise above our temporary world to the eternal, to thine own presence in the here and now. And know that glorious assurance that grows within the human heart, that though we travel and there are many miles yet to be covered, but in another sense, the boat is already at the land whither we would go in Christ, we enter in. Then thy name be praised as we seek thine evening blessing through Jesus Christ our Lord.
