We're continuing our exposition through the book of Exodus, and we are now at Exodus chapter 25. This afternoon, we'll be looking at Exodus chapter 25, verses one through nine. So Exodus chapter 25, verses one through nine, hear the word of the Lord. The Lord said to Moses, speak to the people of Israel that they take from me a contribution from every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive the contribution for me. And this is the contribution that you shall receive from them. Gold, silver and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and fine twine linen, goat's hair, tan ram skins, goat skins, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil, and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones, and stones for setting, for the ephod, and for the breast piece. And let them make me a sanctuary. that I might dwell in their midst, exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all of its furniture, so you shall make it. Praise the Lord for his word. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you once again, bowing our hearts before you as our King, our God, our Savior, our Heavenly Father. Lord, we pray that you would take your word here as we begin looking at the tabernacle. this building in which you ordained your people of old to build so that you may dwell within them. Lord, we pray that you would instruct us, teach us, and apply it to our lives. Pray in Christ's name. Amen. So this afternoon, we're coming to the last major section in the book of Exodus. If you remember the general outline of the book of Exodus, there's really three major sections in the book of Exodus. The first major section is about the God who delivers. That's Exodus chapter 1 through Exodus chapter 18. In that chapter, we have the call of Moses. We have the great Exodus happening, the splitting of the Red Sea. That all happens in the first section. the plagues, all those stories of God delivering his people out of bondage and slavery in Egypt. Then you have the second major section, which is the God who demands. This is all about God's law. This is Exodus chapter 19 through Exodus chapter 24, what we're just now finishing. But that section, we had the Ten Commandments, God's holy, enduring moral law. You had all the the civil and ceremonial laws that were applied to the nation of Israel. Lastly, we looked at the covenant God made specifically with Moses and his people. And now we come to the last major section. This is Exodus 25 through the rest of the book, Exodus chapter 40. And this is the God who dwells. The rest of this book now will be primarily about the tabernacle, about the instructions on building the tabernacle. And then there's going to be a few chapters there where God's people commit idolatry and use some of those materials for idolatrous reasons and Moses will intercede. And that's just a few chapters. And then after that, the rest of the book is going to be the construction of the tabernacle, God's people taking the instructions and doing as he says, leading up to chapter 40 and God coming down to be with his people. Now, our text this afternoon is the very first part, first passage describing this future construction, this tabernacle. It's here you have the Lord instructing his people to give generously of their possessions so that the tabernacle can be built. It's not only God's instruction on the contributions here, but also we're told at the end of our passage, we're told the purpose and the plan for the tabernacle. You could almost say that our passage is really a page one of a how-to guide or page one of an instruction manual for the tabernacle. It's the first page. It tells you the materials needed, the purpose of what you're building, the final goal of the construction. Now, I hesitate to say that because right when I say instruction manual, your first response may be to check out that instruction manuals aren't that entertaining. I mean, who here just sits down and reads instruction manuals for fun? There might be one or two here, maybe some engineers here that might actually do that for fun. But here, this one is different. Yes, it's an instruction manual, but It's an instruction manual divinely inspired by God for this building of great significance. So it's not just any instruction manual, but it's divinely inspired by God and what's being built has significant impact in redemptive history. It's unique for God wrote it, it's for our good. So you don't want to miss the finer details here because there's so much rich meaning as we begin here in chapter 25 and going through the rest of the book. There is so much rich meaning that we're going to just gather from it. It's not worth, we don't want to miss it. There's a lot of application here on the plan and the construction of the tabernacle. But here's the main idea of our passage on this page one of the instruction manual, you could say, is this. God instructs his people to give voluntarily of their possessions from the heart so that they may build a tabernacle for God to dwell in their midst. So God's instructing his people to give voluntarily and from the heart these materials to build this tabernacle so that he may dwell with them. All right, this passage can be seen in three sections. First, we're going to look at the heart behind the contributions for the tabernacle, that's in verses 1 through 2. Then we're going to look at the contributions themselves, that's verses 3 through 7. And then lastly, we'll look at the purpose and the plan for the tabernacle. And as we look at each section in turn, we'll see there's much instruction for us today, even of this ancient building. Let's begin where our passage begins, which is the instruction of God for his people to freely give of their possessions for this construction of the tabernacle. Look at verse one and two. Now it's important here to remember how we got here to Exodus chapter 25. This chapter is not in some sort of historical vacuum. It's important to see how we got here to the significance of the tabernacle. Real quick, you remember, God saved, rescued his people from slavery, from bondage in Egypt. They were beaten, treated terribly as slaves, surrounded by the idolatry, false worship of the pagan gods in Egypt. God delivered them, he rescued them, and then after redeeming them, he gave them his holy law. Then at the end of giving his holy law, God made a covenant with Moses and the people, this new nation of God's people. If you remember that in Exodus chapter 24, there is blood, sacrifices. That all happened right before our passage, right before the section on the tabernacle. And that ordering is very important. God's people had to be saved and rescued before they could truly keep God's law. If you remember when we looked at Exodus chapter 19, that was the emphasis we made when we looked at the beginning of the Ten Commandments, the prologue. It was for his redeemed people. You don't get the law to be saved. No, you're saved and then you're able to follow God's law. It's not the law, then you're saved. So that ordering was important, that God saved his people, then he gave them his holy law. And then here we have the tabernacle coming after the law. And that's important. God requires his people to be holy before coming to him in worship. It's not the tabernacle before the law. God saves them, gives them his holy law, and then the tabernacle. For if God's people approached God without any holiness, what would happen? Consuming fire, death. So they had to be saved. They had to be given God's law to know what true holiness is. And then comes the tabernacle. Then comes God dwelling with his people. So that order is really important. The law and then the tabernacle. So don't forget that order. Now, these first couple of verses are interesting because of the way in which God speaks to Moses and the instructions he gives here. It's rather different from the instructions God has given Moses in the past. and it has a lot to do with tone. Look over verse one and two again. It's the tone and nature of God's instruction here. Now what do I mean? If you read back over that passage, if you look at that passage compared to the other times God speaks to Moses, you'll notice a difference. Usually when God speaks to Moses and tells Moses to speak to the people, it's usually God issuing forth these strong commands. God telling Moses, you pronounce this, you say this, you command this, you say the Lord said this. There's always commands being issued forth for the people to obey. Not much suggestion or advice, but it was command after command. And that's what we saw in Exodus 19 through 24, right? It was just command after command. You do this, die. You do this, here's this command, here's this command. Most of God's speech to Moses and his people are those as commands issued forth by our great king, by the God of the universe. However, when you get to these two verses, there's a different tone, isn't there? Listen to it. He says, Speak to the people of Israel that they take for me a contribution. For every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive the contribution for me. There's still instruction here for sure, but there's less of a command of force, if you notice it. He instructs his people to take up a contribution, but he gives them the freedom in their giving and the quantity. He says, however a man is moved in his heart, you shall receive the contribution from him. This passage is very similar to 2 Corinthians 9, verse 7, where the Apostle Paul writes, There's this emphasis on voluntary giving. And not just voluntary giving, but voluntary giving from the heart unto the Lord, not under compulsion or force by law, so to speak, but out of gratitude and love. I want to consider these truths as they're taught in this text. First here, God desires a giving, a worship that is voluntarily. Now, what do I mean by that? True worship of God must be as one has decided themselves, not forced upon. For example, if someone threatened you to worship God or they would harm you, they say bow down or we'll cut your head off, then you bowing down to God would be more of a going through the motions, you would say, so your head wouldn't be cut off. It wouldn't be true worship. It would be forced. This is not what God desires from his people. It's like if someone was being forced to marry another person. That seemingly would not be true love of one another if forced by compulsion of others. In the same way here, worship must be voluntarily in that sense. This is a principle and truth held especially by Baptists throughout history, throughout our whole history. For it was our Baptist forefathers who contended that the state could not force people to worship God. They could not force someone to be a Christian. And this is really a bedrock Baptistic principle of religious liberty, of freedom of conscience. The freedom of conscience is even a whole chapter in our confession of faith. This is why as Christians, as a church, we don't believe the way to bring about the advancement of the gospel is by physical war or violence. We're not saying, hey, Heritage Baptist Church, next week on a Saturday, let's go through Highland and if no one accepts Christ, let's beat them to death until they do so by sword. Let's advance the gospel. No, we're not doing that because that's not how the gospel is to be proclaimed. That's actually been a way in which some people have thought it to be in human history, but that's not how the gospel is advanced. This passage teaches that enduring truth and principle of God's desire for his people to worship him must be voluntarily, must be a working of the Holy Spirit in their own life. It can't be coerced by the state or coerced by a family member or coerced by a pastor or coerced by anyone. It must be voluntarily. And it's just a great reminder to us that we cannot force people to be Christians. I mean, I know that is such a simply stated truth, but it's good to remind ourselves of this. Yes, we need to urge folks. We need to proclaim Christ to them. We need to point people to Christ every opportunity we get. But at the end of the day, none of us can force people to become Christians. You could possibly make it to where they may say it verbally, but they're not really. It's not a heart worship. The Holy Spirit must work inside of a person, must produce faith, and we don't have the power to do that with anyone. That is in relation to salvation as we think of just salvation, but this passage is more about worship and service unto God. Similarly, just like we can't force people to become Christians, we can't force Christians to serve God, right? Our fellow brothers and sisters. See, even service unto God, the giving of our energy, our time, our money, our possessions, that has to be our own desire, right? It can't be forced upon us by outside forces. We must be compelled by the Spirit of God, not by man. Now again, that doesn't mean we leave our brothers and sisters to their own devices and to themselves and don't confront sin in their own life. No, we need to do that. That's right. That's biblical. We need to compel them to follow Christ. We need to call out sins. We need to be there for one another. But at the end of the day, we can say those things, but we can't make people, even fellow Christians, do what is right. We can't make them serve God in a specific way and worship Him. That's not true worship. So here, this enduring principle, even from these first couple of verses, is God's desires for his people to voluntarily worship him, to be a cheerful giver, not out of duty. And this is Old Testament and New Testament. God always desires and enjoys the gifts and praises of his people. Now, with that said, brothers and sisters, I wanna encourage you to serve God cheerfully. I can't force you to, but I wanna do everything I can to encourage you to do so, to enjoy Him. Don't do it simply out of duty, but do it out of delight as well. Find your joy and satisfaction in Him. In this, you'll not see, by viewing your service in that way, you won't see your service as sacrifice unto the Lord, but you'll see it as a privilege. And you see that big difference? our service unto the Lord, we see it as a privilege rather than a sacrifice that we're making. And that brings me to the other truth here in verse two. It's not just voluntarily, but it's from one's heart. The passage says, from every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive the contribution for me. He doesn't tell Moses, go around and look through everybody's stuff and tell them to give this or give that. He says, as it moves them in their own heart. Yes, it must be voluntarily done, but it must be voluntarily done for the right reasons. Someone could voluntarily serve God, but they could do it for selfish reasons, right? You can voluntarily serve God in a certain way, but do it for your own gratification. Do it to be seen by others. You could do it to get praises from others, to get prestige. You can make an idol out of worshiping God or serving God. But that's not true worship either, even if you voluntarily do it. I mean, no one here, for the most part, if you're adult for sure, you weren't forced here to come to church, right? You voluntarily did. But just because you voluntarily come to worship doesn't mean you're truly worshiping. Your heart may not be truly in it. We are called to give voluntarily from the heart, as the heart moves. Again, this truth is found not only in this passage, but throughout the Old and New Testament. God desires worship from the heart. In Isaiah chapter 29, God describes how people drew near with their mouth and honored him with their lips, but their hearts were far from him. God doesn't just require us to say the right things. to sing these songs, but our heart is far away from Him. That's not true worship. God desires to voluntarily worship, but our worship must be a true worship from the heart. It must be us drawing to Him. He doesn't desire worship that's simply going through the motions or worship that's for ulterior motives. No, He calls you to come to Him in worship and to truly worship Him from the heart. And wasn't this the Lord's scathing rebuke of the Pharisees in his ministry? The Pharisees looked great on the outside. If any of us were around the Pharisees, just like the apostles were, remember the apostles were kind of shocked at initially when Jesus was going at the Pharisees. When they looked at the Pharisees, said, this is the best of the best. This is the cream of the crop. They keep everything. They keep the law. I mean, they sacrifice even, they give a tithing of everything, everything in their house. This is the best, this is the most righteous people we know. They look great on the outside, but what did Jesus say about them? Oh, their caskets are beautiful, you could say that, but they were filled with dead bones. Beautiful caskets, but on the inside they're dead. There's no true worship of the Pharisees. They were plotting the death of, to kill the Son of God, to kill the Lord Jesus. Yes, they're going through all the religious actions, but they were not truly worshiping God from the heart. Now I want to ask you, why are you here today, Christian? Why are you here? Why are you here with God's people on the Lord's Day this afternoon? Is it to be seen by others or to see others? Is it because you feel somewhat obligated to be here? Are you here just to keep up appearances? Is it because this is just what you do and you don't know anything different? You should be here simply out of the desire to worship God, to hear his word, to understand it, to obey it, live it, love it, to worship him in song and prayer. Now, for some of us, you may ask, you may think, Pastor, I don't have that heart right now. I am here just because I'm going through the motions, I'm trying to do what's right, but my heart is definitely not in it. My desire for Christ has faded. Seems like my heart's going in so many other directions, but I am here. How can I get back? Here's my counsel to you, brother or sister, if you're in that state, I would encourage you to think upon God's goodness. Think upon God's love. Think upon God's faithfulness unto you. I mean, even what we looked at this morning, look back at where God has brought you or just look in his word and see his grace and mercy in the Lord Jesus to so many throughout redemptive history. Look at Christ, look at his life, his death, his resurrection. The way to get back is to stir your heart and affections once more for God out of love and gratitude and thanksgiving. Start back reading His Word, talking to Him. Think on His wondrous acts in your own life. I've mentioned this many times, but I can't remember if it was Brother Earl during a Wednesday night or one of the pastors at one point mentioning this or maybe one of the faithful members of our church mentioning this to me when I was younger, but they mentioned how they kept a journal of God's answer to prayers or just like just times in your life to where there's this great working of God that you could clearly see in your own life, I'm so glad I received that counsel. Because I had this little journal, it was one of my most prized possessions, where I had just written down certain times in life where there was an answer to a prayer, it might have been small, or some big, dramatic event that I could see really God's work in my own life. And I wrote those down, and that has been so helpful because we're so easily to be forgetful, aren't we? I mean, God can move into our life two weeks ago and then this week something bad happened and we're going around so sad. Even though He's just done something amazing two weeks ago, we completely forget that. But that's why that journal has helped me whenever I've gotten down or discouraged, I'll pull out that journal and just look and think, oh, wow. Look what God did. How can I forget that? I mean, I'm nowhere near where I was there, he answered. I mean, that could be a way to stir your affections, is thinking back on your own life, God's work in your own life. Or again, you just go to the Bible and look at how God's worked. You don't have to have all those personal experiences. You just go to the scripture. But the key is to stir those affections. It's like the prayer in the Gospels of, I believe, but help my unbelief. You're saying, Lord, help me. I desire, but I don't have that desire. Help me here. And I would say you want to stay in that and you want to plead with him. You want to go to his word, go to the places he has ordained for his grace to come to you. So here in the first two verses, the emphasis, God is saying, yes, salvation, law, it's all coming to worship. But when you come to worship me, it must be voluntarily and it must be from the heart. A heart that's filled with love, thankfulness, and gratitude. Now that's the heart behind the contributions. Let's now look at these specific materials listed in verses three through seven. Here are the materials, the contributions that Moses was to collect from the people. He says, and this is the contribution that you shall receive from them. Gold, silver and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen, goat's hair, tan ram skins, goat skins, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones and stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breast piece. Now the goal for this afternoon is is not to go into detail of each of these materials. The reason is because we've got about 15 chapters to where these materials are going to come up and we can save that for then. We'll look at these materials as they're played out within the tabernacle itself. So I don't want to go through these details now because it's going to come up again as we look at their specific use and purpose. So we're going to wait on these specific details because I think there's a lot of great application here, even from the materials listed. At this point, though, I do want to make two points about these materials. First, these materials, as you see, it's a very diverse list. And then, for the most part, most of them are costly. So, diverse list and a costly list. First, this list is a diverse list. As you look at it, there's precious metals, there's yarns, there's all these types of clothing, there's all these types of animal skins, there's wood, there's oil for anointing, lamps, all sorts of different materials. It's a very diverse group of materials, meaning that certain people may have certain of these materials while others didn't. Some of the Israelites would have been more likely to have the goat skin while some others would have had the oil and vice versa. No one Israelite would have had all these in one place. It would take a rather diverse type of group to have all of these diverse materials. And here the invite of the Lord to give contributions was offered to the whole assembly of the people. He said Moses speak to the people of Israel. This was an invitation to all the people of Israel to collect these contributions. It's kind of like, you know, This is a way more important contribution, but an example for us today is whenever, as a church, we make an announcement, right? For VBS list or for help to someone, we're collecting contributions. This goes out to the whole church because not just one person in the church will not have all these things. So, go out to the whole church to see who can bring these certain contributions. Now, that is nothing compared to what we're looking at here, but that'll give you somewhat of a picture. It's a very diverse list, and it goes out to all of Israel. And remind that, again, there are probably certain folks who'd be more likely to have animal skins and other people who'd be more likely to have certain cloths. And secondly, the items are diverse in cost as well. Well, let's keep looking at their diversity. It's not just a diversity of materials, but a diversity of costs. As we're about to see, the second main point with these materials are that they mostly are costly, but not all of them are costly. So it's not like only the wealthy among the people could give. No, there are items like oil for the lamps, which wouldn't be that costly, and other items here listed. Now, I mentioned all this diversity of material and cost. I think, to me, it reminds me of how God invites everyone to give unto him in worship, not just certain groups or classes in the church, so to speak. No, if you are a child of God, you have a privilege to give unto the Lord in gifts and contributions for His glory. No one is excluded to give unto the Lord in worship. God has given all of us gifts for His glory to use, and we're to steward them well. And praise the Lord for the diversity of gifts even among us here, and just in general. I mean, the tabernacle is a lot better by having more than just gold or just silver or just animal skins, right? There's this beauty of diversity that all these added together help in its function as well. And similarly, as we think of today, the gifts of God's people, how he has gifted us by his spirit to serve one another, for we are his building. The gifts that God's given all of us are very diverse, and that's a good thing. We don't all want to be the same at Heritage Baptist Church, do we? There's this beauty of diversity and this help in functioning to one another. And that's why the example used by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament is how to describe the church as a body with a diversity of members. It wouldn't be that great if we were all just one big hand, right, walking around. The whole body is important, all these different functions, the different diversity of gifts, and that's how we are described as a church, is we're a body. We have all different diversity of gifts to worship Him and need one another. The other aspect of these materials I want to point out is the cost of these materials. Like I said, most of them are going to be costly. Think of gold, colored fabric, precious stones. These aren't your run-of-the-mill type items that you just find laying around the desert or wilderness. These are precious, costly materials. Many times they'll be heirlooms or very prized possessions of the Israelites. But here's the emphasis on this point. It's not just a diversity of gifts, but most of them are costly, which reminds us that God calls us to give him our best. all of us to give Him our best. However God has gifted us, in what manner it be, we must take those gifts and steward them the best we can, each individual person. None of us should shortchange God or give Him leftovers in our worship. We're not to give Him leftover time, leftover energy, leftover love, leftover money, leftover possessions, leftover gifts. Whatever he has given us, we must give unto him all that we are, and that must be the best of our gifts. And we see throughout the Old Testament what happens with those who give God their leftovers, of those priests who fed themselves instead of true worship. God is not pleased with their worship, that worship which is half-hearted and not the best. We are to give God our prized possessions. Here it says our gold. Now, why are we to give God our prized possessions? Easy answer, because he's worthy of it. That's why. These gifts are nothing compared to him. What is gold compared to God? What is it? We must never worship the gifts of God. Instead, we should enjoy God's gifts. All of his gifts should cause us to point to him as a great gift giver and to worship him and to worship him alone. Now, I mentioned at the beginning, it's important because later in this story, guess what will happen? God's people are going to worship gold. They're going to take some of that gold and they're going to make a calf out of it and worship it. They're going to take what is this prized possession, keep it for themselves, not giving it over to the contribution, and they're going to worship it. That's not what God has called us to do, is to worship our gifts or to worship the created. And this isn't just stuff, I mean, the story of Abraham is a great story. What did Abraham prize the most? His son. And God called him to give up his son. And what did Abraham say? He said, I will. My precious son, my son of promise, I will give to you, Lord. And God was testing him to see if he would give his prized possession to him. It's not just the stuff. Whatever we prize, we must come to the altar of the Lord and give it to him. Because who gave Isaac in the first place? God gave him Isaac. Whatever God's given us, whatever that prized possession, if it's a person, if it's a thing, whatever it is, God gave it to you. Or if it's a certain talent you have or gift you have, God gave that to you. You must give it to him and worship. Now, whatever you hold dearest to you, again, you must be willing to give it to God. Not just willing, but desire it to go towards his glory. Now, the question is why? Well, because it's all his anyways. Interesting thinking of the Israelites here with all this stuff. You may be asking, where did the Israelites get all this stuff? They're wandering in the desert, if you remember. How do they have all this stuff? You can answer out loud if anybody. Egypt, that's right. If you remember, go back to the story and how that happened. Real interesting story, remember? They just ended up giving it to the Israelites. All their prized possessions to the Israelites. So this stuff's not even theirs. They're going to hold back gold later in the story that's not even gold they earned. And they hoard it. But it's a picture that really the stuff that we earned really was given to us, too. So we can't hoard anything. But even the possessions they have is given to him. Now he's calling them to give it back unto him. And not all of it. I mean, it's just this is just a particular amount for the tabernacle. And their response, our response when God calls us to give him anything, and that might be even our life at some point, it should be yes, for sure. It's all yours. We must give God our best in worship, no matter how small or large. You can't think, well, oh, this person has all these talents and gifts, and they give so much, but I shouldn't give anything at all. No, you will be judged for that half-hearted worship. Whatever you have, you should give it all unto the Lord. However small you think your talents are, your spiritual gifts, or whatever the case may be, you give unto the Lord all of it. Just like the widow's mite in the life of Christ. No matter how small or large, he's worthy of it all. Now this comes to the last part of our passage. It's finally to the tabernacle itself, its purpose and plan. We've looked at the contributions and the heart behind them. But now in verse eight and verse nine, we finally get to the first tom, which is the tabernacle. And these last two verses really are a great summary of the purpose of the tabernacle and really the purpose of the rest of the book of Exodus. Here's verse eight. It says, and let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst, exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all of its furniture, so you shall make it. Here, verse 8, just the explicit statement of the purpose of the contributions. It's for the tabernacle. You know, we're not really told that until verse 8. He says, hey, collect all these things, and we finally get to the purpose. It's to build this thing called a tabernacle, a sanctuary. Why did God want the gold, the animal skins, the oil for lamps? So that they will build a sanctuary for him so that he may dwell in the midst of his people. And think about that. All those contributions ultimately will be used for their good. The tabernacle is for them. God doesn't need gold. God doesn't need you. God doesn't need Heritage Baptist Church. What is he going to do? He owns it all. He doesn't need us. He doesn't need whatever monies we give him, whatever energy we give him. We spend 24 hours a day serving him. He doesn't need that from us. He's completely self-sufficient. Right here, he's taking those contributions to bless them as he dwells with them. It's for their benefit. He doesn't need a house to live in. He lives, he's omnipresent. He's in the holy heavens with the angels praising him. He doesn't need a house built. The house is for them, for him to live in for them. And that's important. Though it's for the people, God took the initiative for this is his desire, his desire to be with his people and his people with them. Again, we must not overlook this purpose because this is the overriding purpose of the book of Exodus. It's the purpose of the redemption, purpose of the law, now the tabernacle. It's all leading up to the purpose that God is going to dwell with his people. It's his initiative. It's his purpose. It's what he wants to do with his people. And it's for their good. And then we're told the plan in verse 9. So that's the purpose. And then plan in verse 9. Here's the master plan. It says, exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all this furniture, you shall make it. And really the next six chapters or so of the book of Exodus is just God's giving instruction after instruction on how to construct the tabernacle with these said contributions and materials. And he's going to give them exact detail and instruction. They won't have to guess on anything. It will just be, I mean, as we'll go through it, I mean, if you have time the next few days or weeks, you can read through these chapters really quickly. Look at just these instructions God gives them. It's very exact. He's going to show them exactly what to do, the pattern to follow. All they have to do is follow it to the T. Now, once again, just notice the grace here by God, even in the tabernacle. God is giving it all to them. He gave them the contribution and materials from Egypt. He saved them. He gave them the law. Now He's going to give them the exact instructions on how to build a tabernacle so He may dwell with them. He's really doing it all, right? There's no passive God when it comes to His people. He's actively pursuing them, redeeming them, dwelling with them. All of this is so important because these materials aren't just to build anything, but it's a home for the glory of God to dwell so that His people could commune with Him. And I want to close on that, just thinking upon what the tabernacle actually is. Again, we'll have like 15 chapters to think through this, but here it's used for the first time in this section. All these materials are used to build something. Yes, with a purpose for God to dwell in it, but it was to be a physical building of sorts. Now, what exactly is a tabernacle? It literally means dwelling place, but it was a special place, a holy place for God to be present, especially with his people. That's where you got the sanctuary part. But really a tabernacle is really a portable building, a temporary building, you should say. It's built in such a way to be transported easily. You can maybe say it's the tent of all tents. That's why it's called the tent of meeting. It's this portable tent, you could say. It can move as God's people are on the move as well. Again, you could say the tabernacle is a big tent. And if you ever really thought about the Bible, especially go through the book of Genesis, The Bible is filled with tents. It's really one of the first shelters of man. But there's more imagery of the tabernacle than just being a tent, but it's the tent of God as we see here. The tent at this time in the history of God's people reminded them that they were on a journey. They were moving around because they had no place. They were going to a promised land. They just came from slavery. They had nothing of their own, so they're in tents, so they're moving around. It reminds them that they are pilgrims on this journey, just passing by. Now, ultimately, there is a promised land, but the true promised land is that abiding city one day that we're all going to, because we're all pilgrims here in this land. We might not have tents, but really, we live in homes that can be shaken. Right? That can be destroyed. They're really portable in a sense. They're not enduring or abiding. It's also a picture of the condescension of God to his people. He would live in a tent like his people did at the time. His desire to be with his people were where they were at. I mean, think of that. I mean, think about what Pharaoh had. You go back to Egypt, what did they have for their false gods? Magnificent, huge, just... Well, here, the one true God is going to be in a big tent? That don't sound right. Well, he's condescending to his people with what they have, how he can dwell with them in that way. So we see the condescension of the Lord to be with his people. We can't end this passage, this topic of tabernacle, without thinking of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, can we? Yes, I know it's the new year. It's not Christmas anymore. But you know, you can still talk about the incarnation of Christ outside the month of December. You can play music about the incarnation of Christ at any time you want, church, any time. This is a part of the gospel. I mean, we need to glory in it at all times. Well, you go back to John 1, we're told Christ, who's the Word, became flesh and did what? Dwelt among us. You could really say the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. The greatest condescension of God to his people wasn't that of the tabernacle, but was that of God taking on flesh in the person of the Lord Jesus. This tabernacle we're going to look over the next 15 chapters, it's important. We're going to look at all the great application that comes from it, that teaches us about God, teaches us about ourselves, and teaches us about Christ. But this isn't the end-all, be-all. The tabernacle is not the end-all, be-all. There will be a temple. And after the temple, that's not the end-all, be-all. But the end-all, be-all we see is Christ as the ultimate one, the ultimate tabernacle is what it's pointing to. Christ, Jesus, the one who's Emmanuel, God with us. And he's more than a tent, he's a person who lived, died, resurrected on our behalf to save us. And why did Jesus come and tabernacle among us? So that we may dwell with God forever. That's the purpose. Think about that condescension. He came and tabernacled, moved portably with us. And he came in a lowly body, in a world that's fallen with sin, even affected by it in such a way that he was crucified. And why did God do that? So that we may dwell with him. As we look into this new year, maybe remember that all of us are pilgrims on a journey. I think it was Brother Steve who's made this point, who's the greatest realtor ever. I know you may not want me to say that, but Brother Steve, he'll make this point where he'll say, you know, people look for their forever home. You know, I know as a realtor, he gets that all the time. Like, I'm looking for this home that I'm going to stay in for the rest of my life, my forever home. And he's made the point, and I think it's just a great point, not to steal the thunder. He may say it to you at some point, but he's mentioned how there's only one forever home, and that's not here. No matter how great of a house, whatever the case may be, there's no forever home here. The only forever home is that holy one abiding city forever with God in the new heavens, new earth. And that's a great reminder for us. This isn't our home. We're all pilgrims. We're all living in tents, so to speak. And we're all called to worship God with our whole hearts and give him our best in worship. That's what we take away from this passage is that God calls us this year, not in the future, but today and every day to give him our best in worship every day, voluntarily from the heart, all that he has given us. May this be our New Year's resolution, not to give him seconds anymore, but to give him our very best in worship and service, for he has done so much for us in the sending of his son to die and to save us. Our response this year is to give God our entire lives. Finally say, hey, this is the year I give the blank check. God, do with what you want me this year. No holding back. in worship, wherever the day, wherever it may be. Not holding back certain aspects of our life and just giving God this or that, but giving Him our whole life in worship. Let's close in prayer.