Transcription of the Video: God with Us

The ancient land of Israel is a testimony and evidence, if you will, of the greatness of what God did in that country, a testimony to the truth of the words that we find in the pages of the Bible. 

In 586 [B.C], the Babylonian army on a campaign to conquer the world came marching through this country and destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple that stood in the middle of it. Nothing has ever been found of that destruction except for maybe one small remnant. But recently, an archaeological dig far from Jerusalem uncovered a temple that functioned at the same time as the one in Jerusalem and a temple that's very much like it. It can help us to understand how the Jewish people worshiped in Jerusalem 750 years before the time of Jesus. 

We're sitting in an outer court of a temple from the time probably of Hezekiah. Let's set ourselves. The name of the town is Arad. Now around the outside of this small town that you're sitting in right now is a much larger Canaanite city that dates back into the bronze age, quite a ways back in fact. Maybe as far back as 3,000 B.C. And that city was here when Abraham lived in the Negev. Abraham settled just to the north here in the mountains of Hebron as well as living over in Beersheba to the west of us in the plain of Beersheba. So Abraham came to this area as a shepherd-Bedouin kind of person. In the Israelite period, the Canaanite city was gone. It had been destroyed possibly by Joshua. And it had be rebuilt as an Israelite fort. 

There are six levels in this tell you're sitting on - six Israelite levels. Solomon fortified it the first time. The reason he did that is the same reason that he fortified places like Azekah, Beth Shemesh, and Lachish. There's a way you can go up into these mountains here, up toward Hebron and from Hebron to get into the hills and eventually find access to Jerusalem. So Solomon saw this fortress probably as a defense of his southern frontier. After Solomon died, Rehoboam became king of the south, and after he became king of the south, Pharaoh Shishak came from Egypt and basically plundered a great deal of this land and destroyed many cities. 

After that period of time, it was refortified and became again an Israelite defensive fortress. The section of the city we're actually sitting in was probably fortified by Hezekiah. Prior to the time of Hezekiah, people worshiped God all over the country. We've stood on high places in Dan and religious areas in other places as well, and we've read how often people created high places. They worshiped their gods wherever they were as well as in Jerusalem. Now the folks who lived here apparently worshiped the true God and the true God alone. 

In the excavations, a great deal of evidence for the fact that the people here were Yahwistic. That is, they worshiped Yahweh. In fact, very little evidence, as I understand that there was anything but the worship of the true God here. So we can imagine this little town kind of out on the fringes of the empire and yet, the people here had kept their faith, and they worshiped God here. 

Now one of the things that Hezekiah did when he became king is he cleaned up all the high places. He eliminated the Baal worship. He tore down the shrines and the Asherah poles. He did that because he wanted the people to worship the true God.  And even places like this, he said, "You've got to tear it down. You may only worship God in Jerusalem. You're not to worship any god, including the true God, where you live. You've got to come up to Jerusalem, and that way, he was probably not only exerting political control by controlling the religion, but he was probably trying to exert religious control so the people wouldn't fall back into this Baal worship that had been so much a part of their history and of their culture throughout much of that particular time. 

In fact, when the Assyrian army did finally come up to Jerusalem and threaten to destroy the city, listen to what the Assyrian commander says. He's speaking to the people who were sitting on the city wall listening. He says this, "If you say we are depending on the Lord our God, isn't he the one who's high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, you must worship only here before this altar?" So we know from his testimony that Hezekiah had torn down the religious altars and shrines all around the country including this one. But what's fascinating about this-- and that's where the excitement of this story begins for me-- is when that word came here as best we can tell. "Tear down your high place. Tear down your little temple that's built in honor of Yahweh God and come up to Jerusalem to worship."

These people apparently were so much devoted to God and to their shrine here where they had been worshiping God that instead of tearing it down, they covered it up and built over top. So here, you're sitting in what's called the court of worship. Over here is the holy place just through this doorway and beyond the holy place - the Holy of Holies - and they were found with the altars tipped neatly, respectfully almost on their sides, the standing stones in the background lying down neatly and covered over with a layer of dirt and above it, other structures built. So these folks apparently said, "We can't bear to destroy our temple. We can't bear to use it for ordinary everyday things. Let's simply cover it up." 

Now what makes this really exciting archaeologically and leads to our understanding and our appreciation for what went on in the Bible is the fact that there's nothing left of the temple in Jerusalem. This temple comes from the same period of history when that one stood in Jerusalem. And it's modeled after it. It has the same courts with an outer court of worship, a holy place or we can refer to it for our discussion this morning as the priests' court and then a Holy of Holies. It has all the same furnishings and altar here called the altar of sacrifice. Over the here, the base of what was at one time the bronze basin or the bronze seat. Inside of the holy place here where the priests were, a place for the table of shewbread, altars of incense standing in front of the Holy of Holies just as they were in Jerusalem. And in the Holy of Holies, two stones representing somehow the relationship between the people and God. 

The altar itself is actually exactly the dimension described in the book of Exodus. Exactly five cubits square. So they imitated perfectly God's instructions of how to build an altar. It's made of, if you look closely, unworked stones. No chisel marks at all on here, just exactly as God said in the book of Exodus. "When you build an altar, make it of unworked stones, stones as it were cut with God's finger."

So there are insights here into temple worship and into what their sacrificial system meant simply because this is layed according to the same proportions. It's smaller, probably a little bit more primitive in its construction style. But other than that, you can see what a temple was at that time. In the culture, there were different styles of temple. And I find this helpful in understanding how I will impact my culture. 

You needed a place for people to worship, you needed a place for the priests to worship, and you needed a place to represent God. In the temple in Jerusalem, in the God room, or the Holy of Holies we call it, was the Ark of the Covenant. By the Bible's teaching, God himself actually lived in the room that's in the inner part of that temple. Basically, all temples in the culture followed that same pattern - a worship place, a priest court, and a God room (a Holy of Holies).

Now let's talk about what went on in temple. People came here on a regular basis to worship God. And their worship was laid out according to what's found in the temple courts. Now when you came to worship, the first two things that were involved in the worship experience, whether that was on the Sabbath day or on one of the seven Jewish feasts or the three feasts when you went up to worship, or whether it was on a regular day, involved the altar and the bronze labor. Now you would bring to the altar your sacrificial animal, whether you purchased it outside or you brought it from your flock out on the hillsides here around Arad. And that animal was then taken by the priest and put on the bloodstone on the top of this altar and would proceed to cut the animal's throat with the appropriate ceremony that went on.

That blood would run in the blood channel and would come down the side of the altar and would be caught in a basin. And then, depending on exactly what the ceremony involved, would either be sprinkled at the base of the altar or on that very special day called Yom Kippur would be brought up to the Holy of Holies and actually sprinkled in front of where God himself was represented. 

Now the roots of the blood idea come from God's dealing with Abraham. And Abraham says to God, "God, where are the children you promised me? You've said I would have descendants and now my servant is going to be my heir. I have no children." 

And God said, "Well come on outside." Abraham is Jewish, father of the Jews. So being Jewish, God said, "Look up in the sky. Do you see the stars? That's how many children you're going to have." Abraham looks and the Bible says he believed God. And God credited to him for righteousness. 

Then God said to Abraham, "I'm going to give you a land."

And Abraham said, "How will I know for sure," is the implication, "that I'm going to get this lamb?" In other words, "Show me."

God says, "Go get me a heifer, a goat, a sheep, a pigeon, and a dove." So Abraham goes. 

Now notice in the chapter, Abraham doesn't say, "Okay, God. Here are these animals. I've got them all lined up here. Now what shall I do with them?" Abraham knows exactly what to do with them. And the reason is in that culture, there was a ceremony that was used to make a covenant. When you wanted to establish a relationship between two people, a stronger and a weaker, a greater and a lesser person or party of people, you used this ceremony. They picked a place where the ground sloped toward the middle so there's a groove almost like a ditch. Then they would cut the animals from nose to tail, right half and left half and they would lay the two halves across from each other on this sloping ground so that the blood ran down into the groove. Now you've got to imagine a place - God and Abraham - and in that groove, there's a couple of inches of blood (cow blood, sheep blood, goat blood, pigeon blood, dove blood). And then each party leading off with the superior party - the king, the greater party, would stand at the entrance of that groove. They've taken their sandals off. "I give my word that this is what will happen if I break my word." And then they would walk barefooted in the blood. 

That blood would splash up on their ankles and up on the bottom of their robe. Then picture in Hebrew kind of thinking, the person would say, "If I break my word, you may do this to me. I'll give my life for my failure to keep the covenant."

Now the Bible says in Genesis 15 that a thick and dreadful darkness fell over Abraham. In other words, he was scared to death. You can understand why. Abraham knew that if God went to this blood path and stepped in, in some fashion, God had nothing to worry about because God doesn't break covenants. But Abraham also must have had some sense that if Abraham even put his little toe in that blood, he was a dead man. He couldn't keep that covenant. There's absolutely no way he could live up to what God had said in the chapters before and in the chapters after, "Live before me and be perfect."

So you have to imagine Abraham over here in a tent sitting there, the sweat dripping off of him, because he knew what was about to happen. And God, himself, the God of Abraham coming to this pool and saying, "Abraham, I promise you land, children, and that through you and your children all nations in the world will be blessed," which we understand to be a reference to Jesus Christ. And God saying, "If I don't live up to that, this is what you may do to me."

God says, "If this covenant is ever broken by you or by me, it's my blood that will cover it." And every sacrifice then was not a way of saying, "Because of this sheep, I'm forgiven." But it was a way of saying, "This is my claim to your promise." 

As best we understand, the sacrifice happened at 3:00 in the afternoon. So at 3:00 in the afternoon when the sun was in the right place and the time had come, that at that moment, the animal's throat is cut and the lamb dies as a reminder of the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins. 

Not very far from here, in another city called Jerusalem, Jesus hung on a cross. And he hangs there for about six hours. Then came 3:00. And at 3:00, the high priest on the temple mount comes with his knife to cut the lamb's throat on the sacrificial altar there in the second temple. And at exactly the moment that lamb's throat is cut, Jesus looks to heaven and he says, "Father, it is finished. Into your hands I give my Spirit." It's almost as if for a thousand years, God painted a picture, a picture, a picture, a picture. And when it was time for Jesus to become what the picture was, he died.

Now I find it unbelievably powerful to stand here and think of those people who gathered here for all those years because they really believed that that blood that ran on this altar reminded God of his promise to forgive them. And they found at this altar a sense of forgiveness and cleanness and newness. And they could stand here and say, "God, I'm clean. I can go out now and be an influence in my culture. I don't have to deal with those past things. I don't have to carry this guilt around anymore because it's gone."

The worship continues. The priest now takes on behalf of the gathered worshipers, the offering of bread. And it goes on the table. It's called the table of bread, or we say in English, of shewbread. And the priest puts that bread and offers prayer to God as thanks for bread. In effect, saying, "Blessed are you, Lord, our God, king of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth." Or, "Give us today, today's bread."

Now the priest goes in after he's put the bread there and he goes to the altar of incense, and he stands in front of the altar of incense and offers prayer on behalf of the congregation. There's coals glowing on one of these altars, and he stands in front of the altar. The congregation stands outside waiting. When he's finished his prayer, he pours incense on the coals, a cloud of smoke goes up through the roof, and you see the smoke of the incense is sending it to heaven, and you can stand and picture your prayers going up to God. That's a very Jewish way of symbolizing things, and the New Testament talks about prayers being a sweet smell to God's nose, taken from that idea.

Now beyond the altar of incense, probably the most fascinating thing of all in this little temple is what might be called the inner chamber or the Holy of Holies. And in that room, in Jerusalem at least, covered by a veil, the Ark of the Covenant where God himself lived on Mount Zion. And in the Ark of the Covenant, the two tablets of the Ten Commandments. The tablets, of course, were the tablets God had given Moses. When you made a covenant in that ancient world between a king and a lesser king or a country and a lesser country or between God and people, often you couldn't write the whole thing down. God's covenant with Moses after all was the whole first five books of the Bible. Imagine how many tablets that would have taken. They would have needed every donkey they had just to carry the covenant.

So what they did often was to summarize the covenant in a short version following the same outline, a preamble that said, "Here are the two parties. I am the Lord who brought you out of Egypt." A prolog which described the history that leads up to the covenant. "I brought you out of Egypt." Then the curses and blessings and stipulations of the covenant - "You shall, you shall not, you shall not. If you do, here's what you get. If you don't, here's what happens." And all put together in a nice little package that could be carved on one tablet. Then you make two tablets, two copies. You give one to the bigger party, stronger party and one to the lesser party, and they each take those tablets and they put them in their most sacred shrine. And in the case of God and Moses, that most sacred shrine, of course, is the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle. And later, the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple. 

Now two things from that by way of faith lesson. The first is this. When those tablets are taken out to be read, you read them not as a list of dos and don'ts. You read them to be reminded that God loves me. It's a little bit like you might do on your anniversary to dig up your marriage vows, which some of you might remember, and you recite them to each other on your tenth anniversary - not because you're saying, "Hey you promised to love, honor, cherish, and obey. You haven't been doing so hot." But because you want to say to your wife or your husband, "I still love you."

Think how far we've come in a sense of how we use the Ten Commandments, which is God's summary. Sure it's a list of dos and don'ts. I don't want to deny that, but the Ten Commandments is first of all God's statement, "I love you enough to permanently eternally bind myself to you."

The second thing about those tablets has to do with the fact there are two. Each party gets one so that I have a copy that proves that this thing will really happen, and the other bigger party has a copy. 

Now think about as Moses came down Mount Sinai, he was carrying two tablets. What's on the first tablet? By tradition, we tend to think Commandments one through four because they deal with God. And the second tablet, commandments five through ten because they deal with us and other people. It's true, you can divide the law that way. But that's not what's on each tablet. Moses is given both copies because God in effect in symbol says, "My sacred place and your sacred place are the same place. What's holy to me is holy to you. There's nothing more sacred and holy for me than that place and there is nothing more sacred and holy to you than that place. So you take both copies." 

It had to be unbelievable to Moses to think somehow that God would give him both copies, that God said, "That's how important it is for me to live with you that my sacred place, my holy place, my special place is exactly the same as yours." 

You put that ark with those tablets in the Holy of Holies, and on the cover of that ark, under the wings of the cherubim, I'm going to come there and live. Now Moses had to be thinking, "God, you can't live on the cover of a box even if it's a gold-covered box."

And God said, "Yes, I can." 

When you sinned in the beginning, I left this earth and everything in the Old Testament is God looking down on the earth. Then he meets with Abraham just a few times and with Moses just a few more. But then he says, "I love you so much, I want to be right with you all the time. So I'll come and I'll live on the cover of a box." And he does. Not a watered-down version of God, not like some little piece of God. But God himself, the creator of heaven and earth lives on the cover of a box that they carry around on their shoulders. 

Then the Philistines get it. Do you remember? And it ends up at Ekron and then it comes back to Beth Shemesh down that beautiful valley there where we sat. Then finally God said, "That's not good enough. I want that ark to be where anybody can find it so that anybody who needs to feel like I'm there knows where I am." 

So he says to David, "You pick a place and I'll show you where." David picks a threshing floor on the top of Mount Moriah, and Solomon, his son, builds the temple that this one is a small copy of. And they put that ark in the Holy of Holies up there on Mount Moriah in that temple. And the whole temple lights up with the glory of God because God really lived in that Holy of Holies.

You know the sad story of the Assyrians coming and this city dies. Then the Babylonians come and the temple is destroyed. And Ezekiel sees that awful vision of the Shekinah glory of God, the presence of God going back to heaven, and he's gone. But then he comes back, and he says, "This time, we'll do it differently. This time, I'm not going to live on a box or in a building. This time I'm going to be one of you." And there was Jesus born in Bethlehem, lived in Nazareth, walked in Galilee, took the Jericho Road up to Jerusalem, and he put his hand, his arm around the leper and the prostitute and the hurting and the sick and the rich and the poor and the famous and the unimportant, and he said, "I love you enough to be one of you."

When Jesus died, our New Testament says that the temple veil was torn, and that presence of God was now open. And we've often said that means that we don't need the priest anymore, because all of us as priests can go directly to God. 

A Jewish Christian said to me, "You realize that the reverse is also true." Up until that point, the sense in the culture of God was that he was in here. He was everywhere. They knew that. But his presence is here. Now the veil is gone, so sure, I can go to him. But also, there's the image that he comes out. And you see the very power of God coming out of that place, off of that box from where those tablets stood, and now through you - and those who believe - to the world. You'll be on the temple mount. It's beautiful, but right in the middle of it is a mosque. Next to it are churches and synagogues, and it's beautiful. But I don't think you'll find that God lives there any more than he lives here. 

If you've been in the Vatican - Saint Peter, Saint Patrick's in New York City or in your own church, however beautiful it is. But I don't think you really thought that God lives there either. Then I turn in my New Testament to our rabbi again, our rabbi, Saul, and his few Christians - Jewish and Gentile believers - were very few in number. They were an oppressed minority so to speak in a very evil culture. And Paul comes to them and he says this, "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? And if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is sacred. And you are that temple."

So I think when we come here today to think of what the temple is like, you need to think of what the Holy of Holies was here. The representation of the presence of God is what you are. Out of all the places in the world that God could have chosen to live - in the mountains, in the Grand Canyon, in Wadi Qelt, God has said, "No. I want to live inside of people just like you." And so whenever someone needs to know that there is a God and that he's really real and he's really here, all they would need to do is to turn and look at you. You are God's temple. So am I. And people, that is such a significant chapter to our whole theme of impacting our culture, because the way the presence of God will be brought to our culture is through you.