Exodus 29-35 Recap | OT Ep 11

In this episode, Austin and Ashley recap chapters 29 (and maybe some of ch 28) through 35 of Exodus, exploring the themes of priesthood, holiness, God's desire to dwell among His people, the significance of the Sabbath, and the Spiritual giftings to construct the tabernacle. The discussion highlights God's detailed instructions and the consequences of disobedience, as well as the significance of God's character as both just and and the justifier. 

Reading Plan - Old Testament in One Year
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tSmSv3JOd-gCJS6VSFMtu-iv14NZ45_M/view?usp=sharing

Chapters

• 0:00 God's name on their forehead
• 0:00 The Just and the Justifier
• 2:28 Consecration and Holiness in Priesthood
• 6:16 The Spirit's Empowerment for Service
• 7:42 The Importance of the Sabbath
• 9:53 The Golden Calf: Idolatry and Consequences
• 12:02 Moses' Intercession and God's Mercy
• 14:05 Seeing God's Glory
• 14:55 The Just and the Justifier

Transcript

Hey everyone,

My name is Austin. And my name is Ashley. Welcome to the Clean Slate Podcast. Where we're finding Jesus in the Old Testament.

Welcome back friends and thank you for joining us for episode 11. Today's recap is going to cover chapters 29 through 35, but sometimes it's necessary to take a step taking a few steps forward. We're gonna begin today's episode by taking a small step back into our last episode.

So remember in chapter 28, God tells Aaron and his sons that they would serve him as priests. You may have noticed that the priests were to wear 12 stones on their breast piece of judgment, which represented the 12 tribes of Israel.

priest was also to wear a plate engraved with the phrase, holy is the Lord, with the name of God, and attach it to his turban on his forehead. This represents the 12 tribes of Israel, so the people of Israel, as holy to the Lord. Okay, so pin that in your brain for a second.

Now travel with me to Revelation chapter 22, John's vision of the river of life.

We're gonna pick up in the middle of verse two, it says, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. Skipping down to verse four, it says, they, talking about believers, the servants of the Lord, will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads.

Y'all, when I read that, it blew my mind.

We see in the book of Hebrews chapter 9 that it tells us all of these things to do with the tabernacle are “copies of the heavenly things”. Then it says, “but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.”

Y'all, Jesus is the greater than. He is THE Great High Priest who has already represented us, his people, before God. He is the all-sufficient sacrifice once for all so that all of those who would call upon his name could bear it on their forehead. And because his name is on our foreheads, we stand before God as holy to the Lord.

Now that he's told them what to wear,

In chapter 29, God tells them how to consecrate themselves for the priesthood. Remember, to consecrate simply means “to set apart to make holy for God”. So God gives them their grocery list of animals and what to sacrifice on what day and how many of each how they were to be sacrificed and such. But I want to call attention to who is doing the verbs here. Picking up in chapter 29, verse 42.

“It shall be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you to speak to you there. 

There I will meet with the people of Israel and it shall be sanctified by my glory. 

I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. 

Aaron also and his sons, I will consecrate to serve me as priests. 

I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. 

And they shall know that I am the Lord their God.

who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them. 

I am the LORD their God.”

God is the one who seeks us, friends. Here, he desires to tabernacle with his people, so he makes a way to do that. Jesus, being the greater than, is the way God is able to dwell in our hearts.

You know, we serve a very specific God, don't we?

We do, we really do. And you know, it's just amazing to see all of the detail that God gives about His tabernacle.

So we see in chapter 30 God's instruction about the altar of incense. Picking up in verse nine, it says, “you shall not offer unauthorized incense on it or a burnt offering or a grain offering, and you shall not pour a drink offering on it.” And I'm gonna jump ahead a little bit.

But we'll soon see in Leviticus chapter 10, Nadab and Abihu offer unauthorized fire on this altar. Just willy-nilly, no instruction by the Lord to do so. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died. The offense comes from them doing it their own way, instead of in a way authorized by God. And as a result, they were instantly killed.

God is holy and will not be mocked, even by the high priest's family.

So as we're continuing to read these things, marvel at our specific God, who is so holy that all of these details he gives the Israelites are for the copies of the heavenly things. So not even the real deal. If the copies are this detailed and intricate, we cannot imagine the glory of the heavenly things.

So then we get into the census tax and basically it's explained that each one was to give half a shekel for the service of the tabernacle. And God tells them basically, hey, don't let the census replace your dependence on me. They could get prideful if they had a large census like we will see later from David.

Next, we see the instructions for the bronze basin for washing and the recipe for anointing oil and incense. It's repeated over and over again that each is to be treated as holy and not to be used for any other purposes on any other things or people.

God’s essentially saying, stop trying to make things holy, which I have not deemed holy.

Ooh buddy, our society is definitely trying to make things holy that God has not deemed holy, aren't they?

So moving on, remember when we get to names that we might not can pronounce, just say them with confidence, right?

I'm going to give them my best, southern try here.

Bezalel is described here in chapter 31 as being filled with the Spirit of God with ability and intelligence and knowledge and all craftsmanship. And God also appoints Oholiab with him. God gives to all able men the ability to make all of these things for the tabernacle.

Someone got the ability to make the table, some the garments, some the oil, others the lamp stand. Not every person had the ability to do everything. Each had a specific gift from the Spirit that they were to use.

So what we see here is God fitting the person for a task that serves the wellbeing of God's people. And he does that today. He places abilities in each one of us to serve the body of Christ and His creation. We do this as mothers, as fathers, coworkers, nurses, doctors, pastors, small group leaders, friends, students, sons and daughters.

Wherever you see yourself in this season, it's to serve God through your abilities that He has given you through the Spirit. Just like here, God is telling Moses that He is equipping those who were needed to construct the things according to His precise instructions.

Then God tells Moses again, the people need to keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you,

In verse 17, it says, it is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth. And on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed. Just to be clear, was the Lord tired? Did he NEED rest? Of course not. He did this as an example to a stubborn or as the Bible would say stiff-necked people.

You know, this is the commandment that we all so easily violate, just willingly violate.

And yet I think that's aided in the immediate gratification culture we have today. We don't know how to slow down and stop and Sabbath and rest in what God has given us.

You have to pre-decide your Sabbath time is gonna be Sabbath time.

There's a reality, a physical and spiritual reality that God created the Sabbath for us to benefit and enjoy. There are lots of what seems like rules for the Sabbath here, but God is trying to cover all of their different pushbacks before they happen. Keep in mind what Jesus said in Mark 2:27. He says, Jesus said to them, “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

In our passage, chapter 31, verse 15, it says that “the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord.” So it's a day to be set aside, consecrated like we've been talking about.

Now, this whole time Moses had been in the cloud on top of Mount Sinai. So when the Lord had finished speaking to Moses, he gave Moses two tablets of stone called the tablets of the testimony, which were the Ten Commandments, written on the stone tablets with the finger of God.

So again, this whole time Moses has been on top of the mountain. So let's move to chapter 32 and check on our Israelite friends.

In chapter 32, the first two verses say, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

So Aaron said to them, take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters and bring them to me.

The scripture goes on to show how Aaron took these rings and pieces of jewelry that the Lord had caused the Egyptians to give to the people of Israel, earlier in chapter 12. They used the very thing that God gave them, to create the idol.

The Israelites, led by Aaron, go on to worship and sacrifice this idol as if it were the one true God.

Keep in mind, only eight chapters ago, Israel said they would obey all the book of the covenant. At this time, the Lord tells Moses what has happened and sends him back down the mountain. Moses intercedes with the people in verse 13 saying,

“Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised, I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever." So this is an intercession from Moses to God because God is really angry about what's happening, but this is kind of the lowercase intercession. The big one comes later. Moses comes down the mountain and sees what's going on and the scriptures say that his anger burned hot. And when he got to the foot of the mountain, he threw down the tablets that the Ten Commandments were written on and broke them.

There's a very beautiful, yet terrible alliteration here, where because of the very grievous sin that had been committed, the Law, the tablets themselves, were broken.

Moses goes straight to Aaron and questions him directly. Aaron offers what might be the worst excuse of all time as to why he's made this calf for them. And Moses draws a proverbial line in the sand.

This line in the sand, the line that demanded people be for God or for this false worship cost the lives of many Israelites that day. Remember, even where there is grace, sin has consequences. But also remember, Moses is a type and shadow of the Messiah to come. So even where there is sin, Moses goes before God and says in Exodus 32:32, “but now, if you will forgive their sin, but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written."

Moses offers his life though he had done nothing wrong in this situation for that of God's people. Moses, of course, had sinned up to this point and would sin more later, whereas Jesus would live a perfect and sinless life. God didn't accept Moses' sacrifice because he was a sinner just like these people, but he did accept Jesus' sacrifice. In the New Testament, the book of Romans chapter five, verses 20-21 says,

“Now the Law came in, to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The Israelites would face some consequences to their actions, just like you and I have to do.

but God is always rich in mercy. And we'll see that in the next couple of chapters.

In chapter 33, God tells Moses to lead the people away from Mount Sinai, but he also reaffirms that he would uphold the promise made to the patriarchs, the promise to give the land of Canaan to the people of Israel. God also tells Moses that he would not go up with the people any further because if he were to appear in their midst after their grievous sin, His holiness would consume them.

This right here, friends, is something we'll have to tease out a little bit more in a moment. But God's holiness is something we have a hard time wrapping our heads around.

Moses started setting up a tent outside the camp so that he could meet with God and harm wouldn't come to the people because of their sin and God's holiness.

In verse 18, Moses asked God to show him His glory. God tells him that he would allow his goodness to pass in front of him, but that Moses would not be allowed to see God's face because it would kill him. God tells Moses that there's a cleft in a rock where Moses can stand while God passes by. That way Moses can see that part of God without dying.

In chapter 34, God tells Moses to cut two new tablets of stone since the original tablets were broken. Moses rose early and dead as he was told.

God instructed Moses to make sure that he came back up to Mount Sinai alone and Moses did as he was instructed.

Verses five through eight say, “the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.  visiting the iniquity of their fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.”

Friends, this is a massive statement by God and can seem to be problematic. When we read it, we think about God being merciful, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness and we're like, Amen!

And then we come to the part about forgiving of iniquity and transgression and sin and we let out another, Amen!

But if we're being honest, we don't know what to do with how in mid-sentence the passage turns and says, I will by no means clear the guilty.

The pressure you may feel is coming from the fact that God is going to forgive all types of sin, but will by no means clear the guilty. Guys, that's us. Remember, the law is a mirror. These people saw God do mighty things and still worship the idol. And we do it all the time. The great conundrum here is how can God forgive sins, but not clear the guilty?

The answer is found in the New Testament in the book of Romans, chapter three, verses 22 through 26. And it says, “for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift for the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Guys, God can be both the just and the justifier because Jesus took the punishment for our sins on the cross doesn't turn a blind eye towards sin. And so his eternal wrath against the sins of all those who would believe, was poured out on Jesus.

After this Old Testament, Gospel filled moment, Moses comes down from the mountain with the new tablets in his hand and Moses' face was shining. Moses didn't know that his face was shining, but the people saw it and were amazed.

Moses would speak to God in these days, his face would shine like this. In spite of Israel's sin, God renews His covenant with them. In chapter 35, Moses gathers Israel and goes over the Sabbath regulations with them.

Like Ashley mentioned earlier, the Sabbath was all about them taking rest and enjoying what God had given them. 

The tabernacle is finally constructed in this chapter and the people of God gave generously toward this, not out of compulsion, but out of their heart being stirred to do so.

At the end of chapter 35, we see it reiterated that God filled the people that were going to work on the tabernacle with the skill and talent needed to do so. Let us end this episode by remembering that God always provides the means of the things He asks us to do. 

All we need to do is be obedient.

And that friends, is going to do it for today's recap. May his grace abound to you and to me as we study to find Jesus in the Old Testament.