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Sermon Date:	April 13, 2008 (Redeemer, Sanford)
Sermon Text:	Joshua 5:13-6:27
Church Calendar:	TKC Week 15
Delivered By:	Rev. Brian Roberts

"The Glory of God"

Yellow is not my favorite color. But, is yellow your favorite color? Raise your hand if it is. I read something the other day which has caused me to think about yellow a little differently.

The famous Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh, grew up in a Christian home. But sadly, fell away from his faith, during his adult life. As he did so, he sank into depression and self-destructive behavior. By the grace of God, however, he later began to embrace the truth again. And he began to rediscover hope in his life. And, as his life took on hope, he gave that hope color in his paintings.

One of the best-kept secrets of Van Gogh’s life is that the faith and truth he was discovering is seen in the gradual increase of the color yellow in his paintings. For Van Gogh yellow was the warm color of God’s truth and love.

In one of his depressive periods, you can see in his famous painting, The Starry Night, a yellow sun and yellow swirling stars, because Van Gogh thought truth was present only in nature. Sadly, a church building, which stands tall in this painting and should be the house of God’s love and truth, is about the only item in the painting showing no traces of yellow.

But by the time he painted The Raising of Lazarus, his life was on the mend as he began to face the truth about himself and repentance. The entire picture is overwhelmingly bathed in yellow. In fact, Van Gogh put his own face on Lazarus to express the hope he had in resurrection.

Yellow tells the whole story. It tells the story of how, increasingly, the presence of God filled Van Gogh’s life. If we were to paint a picture of today’s story in our Thy Kingdom Come journey, it would be filled with yellow.

In today’s episode of Thy Kingdom Come, God does something remarkable. It is a most unheard of thing. God decides to move-in with His people.

Up to this point in time, the location of God’s presence was in heaven above. From there He would visit His people from time to time. He visited Noah and gave him the blueprints for the Ark. He visited Abraham off and on, and established a Covenant with him.

He stopped by to see Moses in a burning bush, and he visited the Egyptians with ten plagues. He led the Children of Israel through the Red Sea, and gave them quite a smoke and light show at Mt. Sinai. And since the time they left Egypt, He has been leading them and guiding them.

Yet, all along, He has been a heavenly God, visiting His earthly people.

But today, all that changes. God is setting up permanent residence with the Children of Israel. And THAT is basically, what the word “Tabernacle” means. It means set up your tent.

God is setting up His tent alongside the tents of his people. If Van Gogh were painting this scene, he would be adding lots of yellow, as God is now present, continuously, with His people, filling them with hope and love.

In many ways, this is mind-boggling. The majestic, infinite, creator God is CHOOSING to live in tent-dwelling, in other words, a tabernacle. It’s hard to appreciate the magnitude of this. The author, Philip Yancey, gives us a little perspective.

Concerning the scale of the created universe, he says this: If the Milky Way galaxy were the size of the United States, Canada, and Mexico combined, then our solar system would fit in a coffee cup.

At this moment, two Voyager spacecraft are hurtling toward the edge of the solar system at a speed of 100,000 miles per hour. These spacecraft were launched almost 30 years ago, and have been speeding away from Earth all this time. They are approximately 9 billion miles away. When engineers beam commands to the spacecraft, that radio signal travels at the speed of light. Yet, it takes 13 hours to arrive.

But keep in mind that this vast neighborhood of our sun – which is the size of a coffee cup – is only one of several hundred billion other stars and their planets in just the Milky Way alone. And the Milky Way galaxy is only one of perhaps 100 billion more galaxies in the universe. It is estimated, that if you sent a light-speed message to the edge of the universe, it would take 15 billion years to get there.

And yet, the God, Who created all of this – the God, Who is bigger and greater than the vastness of this universe, is going to live in a tent among these Children of Israel.

And, it is a rather modest tent at that. The tabernacle has only two rooms, a small room in the back, and a larger room in the front.

The small back room is God’s room. In this room, which is called the Holy of Holies, there is only one piece of furniture. It is the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is basically a box. Inside are three things: the Ten Commandments, the wooden staff of Aaron, and some manna. This box in essence is God’s chair, or throne, in this tiny room.

In the larger front-room, which is called the Holy Place, there are three pieces of furniture. There is a lamp-stand, a table with some bread on it, and a little fire pit on a stand with hot coals to burn incense.

The light of the lamp-stand symbolizes the presence of God. The fragrant smoke of the incense symbolizes the prayers of God’s people being lifted up. And the table with the bread reflects the thankfulness of God’s people for His supplying of all their needs.

Outside the tent in the courtyard, there is a large altar to offer burnt sacrifices. There is also a large basin of water, which is used for washing before entering the Holy Place of the tent. The sacrifices of the animals are to remind the people that in the Covenant that God has made, the Messiah will be sacrificed for the sins of all people.

This tent, this residence, this house of God will be the place where the people of God meet Him. In this Tabernacle they will be reminded of God’s Promise that a Messiah is coming.

They will be reminded that by faith in this Promised Messiah, their sins are forgiven, and they are God’s beloved people. They will be reminded of God’s love and mercy and will praise and thank Him – which is, what true worship is.

And so, the Tabernacle – the tent where God resides – will be their focus of worship and place of worship.

In this world, with all of its worship of false gods and religions of the world, there is one thing these religions have in common. The people must find their way to god. They must navigate rules and laws, and live the right way before they can approach their god.

That’s the way it is in the world. The more important someone is, the harder it is to get close to that person. For example, access to the most powerful leader in the world – the President of the United States – is possible for only a relatively few number of people.

Last December, however, a teenager from Iceland created quite a stir, when he somehow found a secret phone number for the White House. Sixteen-year-old Vifill Atlason claimed he called President George W. Bush out of curiosity. “I just wanted to talk to him—have a chat, invite him to Iceland, and see what he’d say,” the teen told ABC News.

In order to get through security, Atlason pretended to be Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the President of Iceland. He was surprised when his initial call went directly to a higher office to be screened by various security officials. Atlason was asked a series of personal questions in an attempt to verify his identification as President Grímsson, including Grímsson’s date of birth, hometown, and even the names of Grímsson’s parents.

“It was like passing through checkpoints,” the 16 year old said. The checkpoints proved one too many, however. The teen never made it through to the president and was later taken from his home for questioning by local police. No charges were filed.

If you want to meet the most powerful leader in the world, you probably won’t be able to. But if you want to meet the most powerful being in the universe – the Living God of Heaven and Earth, He has made Himself most accessible to you.

God comes down to us, because our sin blocks our way to Him. Our sin is like checkpoints that prevent us from getting close to God.

But God has no checkpoints and no barriers that prevent Him from coming to us. At the Tabernacle, God steps into the community of His people and into their daily lives.

As verses 34 & 35 in the story tell us: “Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.”

Wow! That would have been a sight to see, don’t you think? Can you think of anything more glorious than the Lord coming down in a wonderful cloud of majesty and power and visibly dwelling among His people?

Well, yes! I can think of one thing that is more spectacular – even than the Lord coming down and filling the Tabernacle with His glory. You see, John 1, verse 14 tells us that “the Word,” Who is Jesus Christ, “became flesh and dwelt among us.” And, literally the Greek word for “dwelt” means, “Living in a tent among us.”

Now, this is no coincidence, because you see, Jesus is the replacement of the Old Testament Tabernacle. Jesus is the Messiah, Who is the fulfillment of the Covenant. God still lives amongst His people – you and me – but He does so now, in the person of Jesus Christ.

And through His suffering and death on the cross, and His resurrection, Christ has opened the way for us to regularly meet God – not in the tent, or Tabernacle anymore – but right here in this worship.

Through our faith in Jesus Christ, we meet God, right here – as we are gathered around His Word and Holy Supper, where He makes Himself present to us – the Word, which has become flesh – the Word, which we hear and which we receive in the Bread and Wine.

And through our faith, this glory of the Lord enters our hearts and He dwells with us. And while we don’t see pillars of cloud and fire anymore, the same God of cloud and fire empowers your life.

And in this church and in your lives, the glory of the Lord is seen in the power of the love you share with people around you.

The glory of the Lord is seen in your ability to trust God when illness strikes, or when unemployment strikes, or when fear strikes.

The glory of the Lord is seen when you invite someone to come to this place and meet the God of our salvation – and then you see them walk through the door.

The glory of the Lord is seen in you and through you, when you look to the Lord in all things, and trust in Him above all things.

As St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Now, THAT’S the glory of the Lord.

Thanks be to God, Amen.

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