You Desperately NEED to know this NOW!

Good morning. Welcome back. For forty days Moses is gone. Gone up into the fire, up into the cloud on the mountain. While two million people wait at the bottom of the mountain. And they wonder what's he gonna carry back down to them. More law? More thunder? A longer list of things they've already failed to keep. And after 40 days inside the glory, Moses comes down carrying blueprints, not for a palace, not for a fortress, for a home. Because the holy God, who just shook that mountain, has decided he wants to live in the middle of the very people who couldn't survive getting near him. And that one impossible desire, a perfect God moving in with a people who can't endure his holiness. That's the reason every single board in this tent exists. Welcome, shalom. Welcome to the true word faith for life with Dr. Sean SHAWN YouTube channel. Glad you're here. I'm Sean. This is day 80. We're walking the story of God through the Bible in a year. Exodus 25 through 27. Moshe or Moses comes down from 40 days in the cloud, and it turns out God spent that whole time describing one thing, a dwelling place, so he could live in the center of the camp. Can you imagine? God can live in the center of your camp. All you need is this: His Word. And a desire, a passion to study and understand His Word. What could be better than that? It is one of those things that you know you I wrote I wrote a couple of books, and the last book is called True Word, Faith for Life. True Word Faith for Life. I know. It's gonna be super hard to remember, isn't it? Well, guess where it is? It's at True WordFaithforLife.com up in the store. It's the only thing there other than the Bible rebinding, and I don't that's Melissa's through Mooseworks Bible. Um it's the only thing you pay for. Everything else is free. There's links below. So get a copy. Get one for somebody who's convinced that God wants to keep them at arm's length. Well, he doesn't. It'll help you and it'll help them. So today's question. What a question. What a question. Can you imagine this question? Well, you're gonna get to imagine it because you're gonna get building up in the next one. You don't have to read the chapter, but you also have to understand it.

Here's the crazy thing.

Sometime from now I'm gonna be teaching you about what in the ancient Near Eastern language culture and context, especially especially Hebraic culture, what the number 40 signifies, because that's how long he was there. So, what was God building up in that cloud? So let's go all in. Good morning to all of you. For those of you recovering from surgery, God bless you. We're praying for you. For those of you who are struggling with illness, and some of you are struggling with terminal illness. And uh thank you very much, Linda. I appreciate it. Linda, our sound engineer says the sound is good. By the way, Linda is a phenomenal photographer. Her work is beautiful, very beautiful. And she takes pictures of beautiful things and she renders them beautifully. And um, so hello Susan. Hello, Joe, and Miss Cheryl, God bless you, Nicole, got up at four in the morning to listen. Tammy couldn't find on YouTube. Okay, Tammy, what we have to make sure of is that you're a um that you are a subscriber and that you hit the little bell with all notifications. That way you'll get a notification of when when uh when we're on. And that'll that'll help you. Fuck show. Fuck show. And uh, if you have any trouble, give me a call, shoot me a text, whatever, and I'll help you. For sure. The best place really to listen. I stream to uh five different locations. We used to do eight, now we do five. Um we stream those locations. The best place to listen is through YouTube, uh, the true word faith for life with Dr. Sean S H A W and the link is on the screen, and um it's the one with about around 4,000 subscribers. That's the one you want. The other ones are backup and and uh link channels uh just in case I get deplatformed again. So that way we have somewhere to go. So but I know it's tricky, and uh I hate that for you. I wish I wish it wasn't that way. So the text, good Monday morning or whatever morning you're listening to it. Good morning. Some of you, good night. Some of you getting ready to go to bed, and this is the last thing you're gonna hear before you go to sleep. Not a bad idea. Not bad to start it before work. Not bad to listen to this before you start your day, or maybe on your lunch hour at your work. I know, I know one lady plays it in her shop. She plays it in her shop while she's cutting people's hair. It's pretty cool. Hi, Miss Vicky. Thank you for doing that. And some of you others, you got chores you're doing, and you have it playing in your ear and your little earbud. Some of you play it as you're going to work. God bless you. Safe travels. I mean that. So listen to the very first thing God asks for. Chapter 25, verse 2. By the way, Susan, your mother is 102. Is she is she over a hundred years old? I I want to say that she's a hundred years old or older. I don't know why I'm thinking that, but if you could correct me on that, it's amazing. So I want, you know, this is this is a little bit of a a heady thing, right? We look at it, it's very easy to get lost in it. Because I can dive deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into uh, deep into the the minutiae of the whole deal. And all the Hebraic, ancient Near Eastern language, culture, and context, what everything meant. Go into all of those things and break down the words individually. But we do that at some risk because we get lost a little bit. So, what I want to do is give you the salient points now, and then in our uh in our uh the end of the week summation, the Sunday summation and deepening. We just did one last night for last week. I encourage you to listen to that if you haven't heard it. Um, it was a pleasure. We had a bunch of people there. Live audience was really, really cool. And uh they always are. You guys are the smartest people. I really appreciate you. We had some we had some atheists there. And um 102. Susan's mom is 102 years old. Can you imagine the things she's seen? Ah, amazing. God bless her, and God bless you for taking such good care of her. So, chapter 25, verse 2. Speak to the children of Israel that they bring me an offering of every man that gives it willingly with his heart, you shall take my offering. See, we we we read it quick. Speak to the children of Israel, comma. There were no commas in Hebrew, there are none. That they bring me an offering, comma, of every man that gives it willingly, with his heart, you shall take my offering. The word for offering is teruma. It's spelled tafresh vav men he. It's a contribution, something lifted up and set apart, given from the hand. Notice how God gathers it, not by tax, not by force, only from the ones whose heart makes them willing. The God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills funds his house exclusively from willing hearts. He wants the gift, but more than the gift, he wants the heart behind it. Some people point to other passages as the origin of the tithe. And they say, Oh, you churches, you're all about taking money. They misunderstand so severely, so sadly. The gift is in the giving. Church is free, but it ain't cheap. And here he says, I'm gonna fund my house from willing hearts. He wants the gift. Sure. But more than the gift, he wants the heart behind it. And then verse eight, one of the most staggering sentences in all of scripture. Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. The verb here is shakan. Shekhan, it's spelled shin kaf nun, to settle, to reside, to make a home. It gives us Mishkan, the whole word for the tabernacle, which just means the dwelling place, the place where God comes to live. And here's something worth stopping for. Every other nation around Israel, every other nation around Israel built temples so people could bring gifts up to their gods. The houses were where a hungry deity could be fed and sheltered and kept happy. Israel's God reverses the entire direction. He doesn't need a house. He isn't asking for a shelter. He is building a place where he can come down and live with the people he already rescued. Glory to God. Can you imagine? Can you imagine being those people in those wild times? Can you imagine living that rough life, having come from slavery, having wilderness wandered? And here you are. And the wildest things are happening around you because life is wild then. It was not clinical, it wasn't sanitized. It was the beginnings of the next layer of our faith. Don't look at the Jews with disdain. Look at them with gratitude. Look at them with honor. For they are the only reason we have our faith today. Are you listening? Do you understand what he's saying? The one the people couldn't even touch a few chapters ago. You remember, right? They put a fence around the mountain they couldn't even touch. And then all of a sudden things are changing. This wild environment, things are changing. I don't want you to visit from a distance. So what he says, I don't want you to visit from a distance. I want to move in. I want my tent pitched right in the center of your camp. So the first thing you see every morning is that I stayed the night. I didn't leave. Good morning, Miss Cunningham. I stayed the night. Now watch the order of the design, because the order preaches: God doesn't start at the front door and work inward. He starts at the dead center at the very heart of the dwelling. And he works his way out. The first thing he describes is the ark, a chest of acacia wood, overlaid with pure gold, and on top of it a covering of solid gold with two cherubim, wings stretched over it, facing each other, looking down. That golden lid has a name. It is the kepret, kaf, peh, resh, taf, what the old translations call the mercy seat. And that name is no accident, because it comes from kafar, to cover, to wipe clean, to atone. And here's what God says about the exact spot, verse 22. Are you ready? There, I will meet with you, and I will commune with you from above the mercy seat. Do you see the gospel hidden in the floor plan? The first place in all of creation where God says the words, I will meet with you, isn't a throne of judgment. It is a throne whose very name means mercy. The one spot where heaven touches earth is a lid called atonement. The whole design is quietly preaching the gospel before a single prophet opens his mouth. You come to God through the covering of your sin, or you do not come at all. Then God moves outward, and every piece keeps whispering the same word. The table with its bread of the presence, 12 loaves, one for each tribe, reminding Israel that they are welcome guests in God's house, not tolerated servants. The lampstand, the menorah, hammered from a single piece of pure gold into the shape of an almond tree in blossom, turning the holy place into the little echo of Eden, life and light flourishing again where God dwells. Every board, every loaf, every branch of gold is saying one thing: communion. Communion come with me. The tent, and inside it a veil, a paroquette, woven with cherubim, hung to separate the holy place from the most holy place where the ark sits. And mark that veil. Because it holds two truths at the very same time. It says God has come, He is really here, He has moved in, and it says you still cannot simply walk in. There's still a barrier. But hear this clearly, because it changes how you see the whole thing. The veil is not there to keep God away from people. It's not there to keep God away from the people. It is there to protect the people from the holiness of God. The curtain is mercy. It stands between a consuming holiness and a people who could not survive it unshielded. Then, chapter 27. God moves all the way out to the courtyard. And the first thing at the entrance is the bronze altar, where the sacrifices are made. Think about what that means for anyone approaching. Before the holy place, before the ark, before anything, you meet an altar. Before anyone enjoys the presence of God, something else dies first. There is no other door in. Come on, come on, get the connection, get the connection. If you don't get it now, I'm going to make it clear in a moment. Here's the theology behind it. Four things in this passage carry immense weight. More than a quick read, ticking a box will give them. First, the willing heart. God funds his own dwelling only from hearts that give freely. And that tells you what he's actually after. He's not after your compliance, he's not after your money. He's not after any wealth that you may build. He's not after your show. It's your willingness. Are you willing? He will not force his way into a place he invitation. Have you invited him? He won't force his way in. Second, the direction of the design. God describes it from the inside out, starting at the mercy seat and moving toward the door, because grace originates at the throne and works outward toward us. We come in from the outside. He starts from the center and reaches out. Third, the mercy seat itself, the single appointed place where God meets man, is an atonement cover. That's not decoration. That is the entire logic of how the holy God and a sinful people can ever share an address. Fourth, don't miss this. The whole structure answers one unbearable tension. A holy God, the holy God, wants to dwell with people who cannot survive his holiness. That's the problem. Every board is solving. Every piece of the tent is solving. Every component is solving. The altar, the labor, the vel, the veil, the blood, the mercy seat. None of it is arbitrary religious furniture. Every piece is another part of the answer. To how the God of the trembling mountain can live in the middle of the camp without consuming the very people he came to be near. Put it together, and the tabernacle says this God's desire to dwell with you is so strong that he designed it an entire way to make it survivable. This is the news flash of the day. This is the news break, breaking news. Here's where this gets personal because it matters to you. It matters to me because a lot of us carry a quiet picture of God that this chapter simply demolishes. We picture a God who tolerates us at best. A God who keeps his distance, who shows up when we performed well enough, who's basically looking for reasons to stay far off. And then you read 40 days of blueprints and you realize God spent them designing a way to move in, not to visit, not to check on you, to live with you. The whole tent is God solving at great cost the problem of how to be near people who could not otherwise bear his nearness. And notice, he never once considered the easy solution, which was simply to stay away. He could have stayed on the mountain. He could have remained the god you approach carefully from a distance on the good days. Instead, he drew up plans for a home. The distance was never what he wanted. The distance was the problem he kept working to solve. So the honest question today isn't whether God is willing to be near you. The tabernacle already answered that. The question is whether you stop treating him like a God who wants to stay away. When he has spent all of history building a way to come close to you. Not simply on the surface. This won't change your life, this can be your life. For eternity, you have to understand this. If you miss this, you've missed it all. Listen to how John opens his gospel. The Gospel of John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If you're new to Scripture, it's the fourth book of the New Testament. Listen to how he opens. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. And the word he chooses is the word for pitching a tent. The word became fleshed and tabernacled among us. John is reaching all the way back to Exodus 25 and saying, You remember the Mishkan, God's tent in the middle of the camp. That was the picture. Yeshua is the reality. God no longer lived behind curtains. He walked dusty roads. He got tired. He ate with sinners. God with us, Emmanuel, the true and final dwelling place, out in the open where anyone could come and remember the veil, the one that shielded the people from a holiness that couldn't survive on the day Yeshua died. The temple veil, the great curtain in front of the most holy place, was torn in two from top to bottom. Not from the bottom up. As if a man did it. From the top down, as if God himself reached down and tore it open with centuries of sacrifices, could only symbolize one sacrifice accomplishes forever. The barrier between sinful people and the holy presence was ripped apart by the death of the one who is our atonement. And now the holiness that would have consumed us has been satisfied. Thank you, Father. Glory to God.

Thank you, Lord. Oh, thank you.

The mercy seat was never just furniture. It was never just something to read about. The mercy seat was a promise with a shape. And the shape became a person. Yeshua is where heaven meets earth now. Yeshua is where the blood is applied, and his presence is found. The story of Scripture was never merely about forgiven sinners kept at a polite distance. No. It's about a the God who refuses to abandon his people. He refuses to abandon his desire to live with the people he loves. Eden opens with God walking among his people in a garden. Revelation ends with a loud voice from the throne declaring: Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and he will dwell with them, and everything in between, the tabernacle, the temple, the manger, the cross, the spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Ruakakodesh who lives in you, is the single long story of God restoring what sin destroyed. And closing step by step the distance he never wanted in the first place. Here's how you can obey. Here's a concrete way that you can obey. First, name the picture of God that you've been carrying, the distant one. Maybe your dad was a distant, disconnected person. Maybe he held grudges. That's not God. Name the picture of God that you've been carrying. The tolerating one. Through atonement. Through atonement. Not achievement. Come through atonement. Not what display you can do, not how churchy you can sound. Not how churchy you can look through atonement. Third, give God the one offering he's asked for at the start of this chapter, a willing heart, and open the door to the room you've kept him out of. I have for you today a challenge and a choice. What if the God you thought was looking for reasons to stay away from you? What if he's actually been building at enormous cost a way for you to come close? Where have you been keeping him? At the door of a life he's designed, an entire dwelling to live inside. Here's the choice today. Keep him at a careful distance. You can if you want. Keep making him the visitor you tidy up for. It's not clean enough, it's not clean enough, and not clean enough. Or believe what the blueprints have been saying all along. That he wants to move in. Open the door. Open the door. Pray with me. Father, in the name of Yeshua, your son, and our Redeemer, our Savior and our King. Thank you that you never wanted the distance. Thank you that you came from the garden to the tabernacle to the cross. You've been building a way to dwell with us all along. Thank you that you met the tension of your own holiness not by staying away, but by making a way at the cost of your own blood to come near to us. For everyone who has believed, thank you, Father. Thank you for everyone who has believed you are looking for reasons to stay off. But then they saw, they saw and they heard the invitation, and they invited you in. For the others that are rejecting you, who think that you just want to stay away, Heavenly Father. Show them the blueprints and let them open the door today. In Yeshua's name, Amen. Maybe maybe you've kept God at the threshold your whole life. Sure, you had to clean the house first, before he'd ever come in. Man, I gotta clean up my life before he'll ever come near me. I gotta get myself better before I go to him. Before I invite him, I gotta get it fixed, my sins, my hurts, my habits, my anguins, I gotta fix it all first. He never asked for that. He asked for a willing heart. We'll work on all that other stuff later. We'll work on all that stuff together. Pray this with me. If you've never invited Jesus, Yeshua, into your heart, today's the day. Now's the time. Pray this with me. Yeshua, I need you. I believe you died for me and rose from the grave. Just like you said you would. I surrender my life to you today. Forgive me, fill me with your Holy Spirit. Lead me. Forgive me of my sins, my hurts, my habits, my hang-ups. I'm yours. In your matchless name. Amen. If you just pray that, welcome to the family. If you want help or you need help, or you have questions, I'm here to answer them. You can talk to me directly through Trueword FaithforLi.com slash contact, or just go to TrueWordFaithforLife.com, click on the contact button, click on the voicemail, leave Dr. Sean a voicemail on the side. Uh you have two minutes, so get your thoughts together. If you'd rather speak rather than to write or type, it's your choice. As soon as I receive it, I will be in contact with you. I've helped countless others. I'd be ecstatic to help you too. If this is your first time with us, we've been walking through scripture chronologically since Genesis 1. I'd encourage you, however you listen, we're on every we're on every podcast platform there is. Every single one. Um you know, iTunes, um, iHeartRadio, uh, Spotify. All of them. We're on all of them. Like 20 some. Start a day one. You can listen to those while you're doing whatever, and then come back every morning, Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and you can listen, and it would be lovely. Be lovely to have you. Yeah, you'd be doing two a day. Well, I know people that listen to three episodes a day of this. Yeah. So they must not have anything else to do. Well, they have a job where they can have their earbuds in and be listening, and you know, it's a it's somewhat of a meditative thing. There are several that listen on their way to work, and then they get to work, they do their work, then they go to lunch, and then they pop this in, and they listen to this, and then they listen on the way home. We have a player on TruewordfaithforLife.com as well under episodes. We also have blog posts, we have study guides. The only thing I ask, I've made it so you can copy and paste it. Free. The only thing I ask is include the copyright. That's the only thing I ask. I'm a public art published author several times, and and everything there and everything I do here is copyrighted. I just I just want the acknowledgement of it. That way, when people twist it because they will, um people know who to come to and go, hey, did you say this? No, I did not. Actually, I said this. And if you think it doesn't happen, it does.

Forty days in the cloud. Forty days.

From a garden to a tender, to a manger, to a torn curtain, to a room inside of you. He never wanted the distance. He always wanted to dwell. If somebody you know has been holding God at the threshold, convinced he wants to stay away, send them the link to this one. Tell them he drew up the blueprints to move in. Now nobody special, but I'm gonna pray this blessing in the name above all names, in the original language that it was given. The Lashon Hakadesh, the language of God. I'm gonna pray it in Hebrew and then I'm gonna pray it over you in English. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Until tomorrow at 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Until then.