On Sabbath morning, Pastor Kelly preached the fourth sermon of the “Sanctuary Series.” This sermon was entitled “Won’t He make You clean?!” We read form Exodus 30-17-21.
Exodus 30: 17- 21 And the Lord said to Moses, 18You shall also make a laver or large basin of bronze, and its base of bronze, for washing; and you shall put it [outside in the court] between the Tent of Meeting and the altar [of burnt offering], and you shall put water in it; 19There Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet.20When they go into the Tent of Meeting, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire to the Lord, 21So they shall wash their hands and their feet, lest they die; it shall be a perpetual statute for [Aaron] and his descendants throughout their generations.” (Amplied version)
Recap:
- God created us to be relational beings. No matter how much we say that we want to be alone, we all want to connect with someone at sometime. We like to have people in our lives that we can talk to and communicate with.
- God’s make-up is relationship… 3 in 1 all related perfectly with one another, so it makes sense that His children are relational as well
- He created us for two purposes: relationship and fellowship. You are not obedient unless you are in a relationship. Everything flows from two main principles: relationship and fellowship.
- Anything that God has for us, the devil wants to break. The devil’s goal is to break relationship and fellowship, for this reason he brought sin into the picture, to do just that. The main victory of sin is that relationship and fellowship between God and man was broken.
- Sin’s big issue is not just the consequences we see here on earth… but the fact that it breaks the two things you were made for.
- Genesis 3: 8 says: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden” God comes looking for fellowship but they are hiding…. We see here that fellowship and relationship were both broken.
- God is absolutely crazy about you!!!! He just loves to be with you, and now because of sin, if we were to be in His presence we couldn’t handle it.
- Moses was asked to build a sanctuary so that Christ could dwell among His People. The entire purpose of the sanctuary was to fulfill two things: God finding a way to be with us (Yes, the creator of the universe desires to be with us); it outlined the plan by which God will make sure that we will be with him for ever.
- Every detail of the sanctuary is not a detail used to teach a doctrine by itself, it’s about God showing his children “this is the way we will be together forever.”
- Be assured that your God is so in love with you that he has a plan that is detailed!!! That’s how much He is in love with us. The entire sanctuary is about God getting back a relationship with His children.
Today:
- Sanctuary is broken down into three parts: The first part is the outer court. The next is the Holy Place, (in where you have the menorah-candlestick-, altar of incense and table of showbread. The third is called the Most Holy Place. The purple veil is between the two (Holy Place and the most Holy Place) and behind the veil is the arc of the covenant. The outer-court represented Christ’s ministry here on earth.
- The holy place he no longer worked on earth but is doing something in heaven.
- God is constantly working on a way to get me into the Kingdom. Even when I am not thinking about getting there, God is still thinking about it for me. He is finding away to figure out how to get our hard headed selves into His presence.
- There was only one way to get into the sanctuary. Just one door….The gate! It represents Christ. John 10:9 says: “I am the Door; anyone who enters in through Me will be saved (will live). He will come in and he will go out [freely], and will find pasture.” Jesus made it clear!!!!
- Three colors: blue, purple, scarlet. Purple means royalty. Scarlet: sacrifice. Blue: Obedience.
- You can’t get royalty without sacrifice and obedience. When you walk through the gate, there are those things represented in the colors that the author wants you to see. When you give your life to Jesus you are Royalty but also, sacrifice and suffering comes with that. Some times we think that when we go through stuff we are doing something wrong, however, perhaps it is because you are a bit too close to Jesus for the devil’s comfort!!!
- You don’t have obedience before you have relationship. We think obedience is just following a bunch of rules, but it isn’t. Additionally, some of us are just obedient because we know that “obedience” gets us.
Pastor Kelly gave the example of him and Pastor Walsh, regarding “Forks over Knives.” Watch the clip to hear the joke J
- God’s biggest thing is not about us but its about when he asks us to do something, will be do it?! When God asks us to do something, we ought to just do it, without asking questions. That kind of obedience only comes from relationship. He doesn’t need to explain to us the benefits, etc. if he explained the results of being obedient to us, we honestly wouldn’t be obedient. Your obedience today may kick in three years from now.
- When God is calling you to something, don’t always look for what the results will be, sometimes God just wants to see if you are willing to be obedient.
- Check your relationship, not your behaviors… out of relationship comes obedience. You cannot have relationship and not be obedient.
- Back to the Sanctuary: You then walk through the gate and you see the altar of sacrifice. Before they moved any further their sins had to be paid, through a lamb/offering that represented Jesus Christ. The only way you get to Jesus is through the blood of Jesus Christ. Don’t take that lightly. It is not what we have done, but it is what Christ has done that gives us the ability to one day be in the presence of God. So when you first walk in the door you see sacrifice. Our Christian faith is built on sacrifice.
Muslim and a Christian were having a conversation. The Muslim’s complaint was: “when one person messed up, somebody else took the blame. You guys don’t take ownership and responsibility.” Pastor Kelly explained that THAT’S the essence of Christianity, the idea that when we jacked up, someone else took our place. If you take sacrifice out of the equation, everything crumbles. It’s all about sacrifice.
THE LAVER
- The laver: it was the place to be cleansed. Exodus 38:8 “He made the laver and its base of bronze from the mirrors of the women who ministered at the door of the Tent of Meeting.”
-In Egypt, before the women would go into the temple, they carried with them a mirror to constantly check their beauty while in the temple. They were so focused on their beauty, because in their time, how you looked would affect the way you would worship. As they leave Egypt, the Israelite women adopted certain principles. They wouldn’t just walk into the temple but they would carry with them some mirrors, making sure they looked ok. God called them to take the object and use them now ‘for the object of my sanctuary.’ They made a conscious decision to say ‘we no longer are concerned about what we look like, we are concerned about our characters.’ Once they got rid of the mirrors they had no way of checking what they looked like. Some of us walk around the world with the mirrors of vanity. We LOOK like we have it together, but on the inside we are dying. The main thing that we should be worried about is character, for character is the one thing that will get us into the kingdom. - Soon as the priest was done with his sacrifice, he had to go up and wash. You cannot step into the presence of God, dirty, even when its dirt from the work you’ve been doing for Him.
- They could look at the laver, and it would show them who they were and how and where they needed to be clean. It represented a portion of our Savior. There are more of us who need to spend more time at the laver and say “show me where I need to be cleaned!” The stuff we have is not one of the quick showers we do when we are late for work where the soap barely touches out skin. God does a DEEP cleansing. If you are 40years old, you have 40 years of stuff!!! Some of the areas we thought we were the cleanest are where we are the dirtiest. The laver doesn’t lie, it would show you exactly where the dirt was.
- The priest had to make sure they were clean before they stepped into the Holy Place. Symbolically, as a church we need to make sure we are clean. God asks us to be clean!! We are all dressed up and still DIRTY! You come to Jesus as you are, but you come to the father CLEAN! The priests didn’t have time to see how dirty the next priest was or worry about other things, they had to make THEY were clean! We need to be intentional about being pure and holy
- Titus 3:1- 5 “Remind People to be submissive to [their] magistrates and authorities, to be obedient, to be prepared and willing to do any upright and honorable work, 2To slander or abuse or speak evil of no one, to avoid being contentious, to be forbearing (yielding, gentle, and conciliatory), and to show unqualified courtesy toward everybody. 3For we also were once thoughtless and senseless, obstinate and disobedient, deluded and misled; [we too were once] slaves to all sorts of cravings and pleasures, wasting our days in malice and jealousy and envy, hateful (hated, detestable) and hating one another.4But when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior to man [as man] appeared, 5He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but because of His own pity and mercy, by [the] cleansing [bath] of the new birth (regeneration) and renewing of the Holy Spirit,”
- The verse about is saying that ‘at one time you were trifling but something happened to you. We are re-generational. The word for that is Palagenesia, which means: coming back from death to life, regeneration: A return to existence. –As if in that state, you weren’t really existing, God couldn’t even count that as existence. In his eyes, we keep living away from me, we have no existence! That’s why the bible doesn’t teach “going to hell.” Christ makes it as if you never existed.
- God wants to go and not only cleanse but wants to recreate who you are and if you look at how he created in Genesis, wasn’t He detailed? He didn’t leave out one thing. Let me make a Genesis in your life… let me come inside and let me recreate and make you into a person that looks like me, so that when we step in the presence of my Father, He wont be able to tell the difference because you will be covered and clean!
Don’t be satisfied just being forgiven, go to the laver. Ask God to show you how you can live more like Him!
CONCLUSION: Pastor Kelly talked about the story where the couple was married for 74 years. They got into a car accident. They were taken to the ICU and knowing the story, the nurses saw the closeness so they put them in the same room together. Their beds were close. The couple was just holding hands. At 3:38pm after all the work, the husband died, flat lined. However, they saw something that was throwing them off. The heart monitor was still registering a heartbeat. They were trying to figure out what was going on. It was concluded that the monitor wasn’t picking up his monitor but hers who was still alive, holding his hand. So, we saw that someone’s heart was still beating for Him. As we lay in the bed called sin and the devil said we have flat lined but there is still a registered heartbeat. They see that it is because my hand is in the hand of someone else.
Your heart doesn’t beat without your hand being in God. Place your hand in the hand of Jesus.
To view this sermon
1. www.mtrubidoux.com
2. Go to “Featured Sermons” (top/right corner)
3. Scroll down to the date, and hit play 
Be blessed, and a blessing,
xoxo,
Views From the Pews
