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Exodus 19:1-8
First Bible reading for today comes from Exodus chapter 19 verses 1 to 8.
On the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt, on that very day, they came to the desert of Sinai. After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.
Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, "This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."
So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together, "We will do everything the Lord has said." So Moses brought their answer back to the Lord.
1 Peter 2:4-10
Our second Bible reading is from 1 Peter chapter 2.
As you come to him, the living stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says, "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."
Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone," and "a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also what they were destined for.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Who Am I? A Question for All Ages
Who am I? It's a question that grabs all of us right throughout our lives. When our kids start primary school, youth, I'm looking at you when you get to high school, when you start a new uni degree, there's that big question, who am I? And it continues through the rest of your lives.
I've got a couple of middle-aged friends, they've both just lost their jobs for the second time in a couple of months, and they're busy asking that question. Am I really cut out for this industry, or do I need to retrain for some other job? On Friday I visited a funeral at my own church where one of our long-standing senior couples is now a single. And like many of those relationships that end for a whole raft of reasons at a whole range of ages, we've now got a single man trying to gauge who he is.
Who am I? It's not just a question we ask of ourselves, but of our churches.
Who are we at the Anglican Church at Deep Creek? What are our priorities? How do we operate? What will life be like with our staff team in flux?
And the Bible has lots of answers, both for individuals and for churches. And I'm really pleased that there's such a wide range of images that we can look at.
And today we're going to see just one small and significant selection.
God's Portable Palace Tent
We've been reading last week and this week from some of the more obscure books, obscure chapters of the book of Exodus. Here's my very brief breakdown of the book.
God saves the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. After they escape Pharaoh at the Red Sea, God brings the Israelites to him at Mount Sinai. There he forms them into his own chosen people, and then he decides to move in among them.
And the last 16 chapters of the book spell out how the Israelites build God's portable palace tent. And this tent is what we call by its Latin title, the tabernacle.
Last week we looked a little bit more detail at this portable palace, and we're spending some time thinking about not just how this palace gets built, but in the middle chapters of Exodus, what does it mean to be God's chosen people? What does this tell us about our identities, about our purpose, about who we are and what we might do?
We don't have to look very far to find that people groups have often described themselves by written agreements. So parliamentary democracy in Britain and now in Australia traces itself back to the Magna Carta, signed in 1215. This document limits the power of monarchs and ensures a degree of rights and responsibilities for those without royal blood. Our American friends are totally obsessed with their constitution, signed in 1787. And if you watch any legal drama or any cop show, they're always pleading one of the 27 amendments made to the constitution.
We might know a little less that last year marked the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights, and you can download 62 pages of protocols and 116 distinct articles of claim. Even in the news this week, we've been hearing about the Australian values statement, which is a very unsexy document with a couple of bullet points on a government website. But people groups have regularly taken time to think up and to write down the terms and conditions that define their group identity.
And so it is with the people of God who build a portable palace for him to travel around with them. They have the same kind of documentation given to them by God, and that's what fills the central section of the book of Exodus. Here are the terms and conditions for being part of the people of God. We might be familiar with the Ten Commandments, which fall into this part of the document, but this is just the executive summary that leads off four chapters of further fine print. But even before we get to the fine print, even before we get to the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, Exodus 19 gives us a preface to this national constitution.
The Treasured Possession and Holy Nation
This is what Phil read for us earlier. If you've got your Bible open, please look with me from the start of Exodus 19.
God sets things up like we often set things up in a constitution. Moses went up to Mount Sinai to God.
The Lord called to them from the mountain and said, this is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob. This is what you're to tell the people of Israel.
You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, how I carried you on eagle's wings, how I brought you to myself.
The start of God's national agreement with his people in the Old Testament is similar to the New Testament. In the New Testament, we celebrate that Christians are saved not by what they do, but what God has done first. And the same is true here in the Old Testament. God constitutes the nation based on what he's done for them. And then God spells out his offer to Israel.
If you're an engineer like me, please learn from our friends who've wasted time doing extra English classes. You can actually write sentences out in a diagram that helps you understand the sentence. Here's a rudimentary way to chart out what's going on in verses five and six. First comes the condition of the offer, a little bit like those legal documents that we spend too much time hearing about. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, if Israel will comply with God's terms and conditions, then he offers them three marvelous privileges, three important outcomes.
If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Now God owns all the nations, but he wants to make the Israelites his special treasure. God owns all the nations, but from all the nations, he's offering to the Israelites the chance to be a special group called a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
These are three key phrases that we want to keep drawing attention to. They're connected to each other, even just in the way we see them visualized here in the sentence.
These are special privileges that meant something to Israel and that they were keen to sign up to. We see in verses 7 and 8, everything the Lord has said, we will do.
They wanted to be my treasured possession. They wanted to be a kingdom of priests. They wanted to be a holy nation.
They understood those terms and conditions and these outcomes, but this might sound foreign to us non-Israelite readers today.
God's Special People on Display
So let's unpack each of these three labels. I'm going to start with the last phrase first. God invites Israel to be a holy nation.
We've even sung that in both songs this morning. We've sung about a holy God. We've sung about our holy hands.
What do we mean by this word holy? Sometimes we think it automatically means pious, upright, good behavior. We've heard in Rachel's prayers the idea that it can come to mean set apart, and yet it's more than both of those ideas.
Being holy means being set apart for God. It means being worthy of God. It means being worthy to enter closer into his presence.
We saw a little bit of that last week with the tabernacle in God's palace tent. It's a little bit like looking at an archery target. In all palaces, the furniture gets grander as you get closer to the center. So we saw with the building materials last week, we might start with bronze on the outside, but we upgrade to silver, and eventually in the very center where God's throne room is, everything is covered in gold. And when we read beyond the book of Exodus, we make our way into Leviticus, we start to hear some of the rules of holiness.
Being holy is being like the center of a target. That's where God is, and as you want to gain access to God, you've got to level up. You've got to increase your score, your standing in holiness, so that you might draw closer to the God at the center of the temple. There are times when people aren't ready to approach God, and the score card tells you, maybe you should come this far, but no further, and there are other times when you are declared holy, and it's entirely appropriate to get closer and closer.
So there's a series of scores for Israelites to look at, but it applies beyond the nation of Israel as well. God says to the Israelites, among all the nations, you as a nation score higher, you rank closer. Some nations might be far from me relationally, others might be a bit closer, but you Israelites can rank at the very center of the target. You can be called holy and live closest to me. God chooses a special people to be near him, and here he's offering to brand them as holy as God.
And it's only once they're God's special people that he then expects the appropriate holy behavior from them, behavior that reflects God's ownership and his presence among them. We don't often much talk about the second description or the second offer that God makes here. God describes his people as his treasured possession.
Now, I'm flashing up a picture for the language nerds in the room. In January, Pedram taught you a Hebrew word. There's bonus prize after the service if you can remember what that Hebrew word was, but today I'm teaching you a different Hebrew word, and it sounds in English like the English word seagull. God says to the Israelites, you can be my seagull, my segula if you want to sound a little bit more foreign there.
Now, whether or not you go home and learn the word, the idea is both important and easy to grasp. We're familiar with world leaders who command vast public wealth, but they also have a private treasury. So our British friends are regularly debating how much do we have to tax the monarch on their private wealth. Lawmakers in the United States are perennially trying to get Donald Trump to hand over his financial records so they can find out not just how does he manage a national economy, but what's going on in his private accounts.
Here in Australia, we occasionally watch a federal politician or an industry leader making private donations to a political party or to a philanthropic cause, and that's what the seagull word means here in Exodus. It means that private, special treasury. So yes, God owns all the nations of the earth, but out of them, Israel is being singled out as a special, private treasure. God wants to dote on them in a way that he doesn't dote on the other nations.
And we can visualise this idea and share it with ourselves and with friends with a whole heap of images. Lots of Australians I know love to collect items, not just individual items, but items in a set. You might be that person who's collecting glassware from a fast food restaurant. You might be that person who's collecting kitchenware from your local supermarket. You might want to complete your set of vintage sports cards or Pokemon or original condition Star Wars figurines.
And many of us know the itch of finding just that right item that completes the set. It might be a more grown-up hobby. You might have just bought a house. You might have just moved into a house. You might have been living in that house for four or eight or 10 years, but you know you need just that right piece of furniture to complete the room reshuffle. You might be that person who scours online trading sites for vintage teaspoons or sporting memorabilia or that final perfect blend of coffee beans.
And whatever it is, the collector celebrates when they've found just the right item. And indeed, if it's just the right item, it often becomes the centrepiece on display so that others might see it and praise us for our wisdom in completing the collection. And that's what God is offering the Israelites. You can be my seagull. You can be collected and on display and showing off my collection.
Gatekeepers of God's Presence
And several of these ideas, and even the remaining label, is well illustrated if we step back to our images of royalty and palaces. Lots of preachers like to make confessions. My confession today is that I'm not an early adopter. I'm not preaching to you from my iPad because it's now 14 years old and will no longer receive sermon documents. My device in my pocket is also similarly old. And I will tell you that it's only recently that I've got around to finishing watching the famous television series, The West Wing.
As the name suggests, even if you've not seen it, it's about the people who work in and around the Oval Office in America's White House. And it's a great reminder of last week's passage about God's tabernacle in the wilderness, which then gets upgraded to God's temple in Jerusalem. It's a palace that's fit for a king. And as you get closer and closer to God's central room in the tabernacle, the materials become more and more valuable. And the same thing with The West Wing. As you get closer and closer to the Oval Office, the artworks and the furnishings become much more opulent.
Now, okay, maybe it was only me who was watching all the items in the background and the set dressing, because the TV show, of course, is not focused on the furnishings, but much more on the people. How are their offices arranged? Are you a long walk to the Oval Office or are you just adjacent? Who can speak with whom? Who are the right people that can get you that prized five minutes with the president? And then whether it's the headline cast or a bunch of unnamed extras, the show is substantially about these degrees of access to the seat of power.
There are degrees of access, and with those degrees of access, there are layers of security clearance. Who's got the clearance to draw closer to the center? Who needs to be kept away at this particular point in time?
And so, while watching this show, we start to meet a series of gatekeepers who surround the man in charge. And we've been starting to see that exactly as with the Oval Office, so with God in his tabernacle.
God chooses the Israelites to be the special holy people for himself. They're the ones who get the special access and who are allowed to hang out near him. They're the ones who get to function as gatekeepers.
And we don't always pay much attention to gatekeepers, unless we discover we want to gain access somewhere. Occasionally, I get to travel, and occasionally, you might do something touristy.
And you largely ignore the gatekeepers unless you've got a question, unless you want to access somewhere. And every now and then, I've been part of a group who's found the right usher.
They're the ones with the special swipe cards. They're the ones who say, oh, look, I know this is roped off, but we're going behind the ropes today.
They can usher you through the special security checkpoints, and you start to realise, this is the kind of gatekeeper I want to hang out with.
In the Bible, God's royal gatekeepers are called priests. It's terribly confusing because it's not what we mean by the English word priest in the context of an Anglican church. So Megan and other priests are not gatekeepers who control access to God. But the biblical priests do serve this function. There are times when it's unsafe just to barge into God's presence at the centre of the tabernacle. There are other times where it's entirely appropriate, and the biblical priests usher worshippers closer to see God.
The biblical priests even get a special uniform, a little bit like the one in the top right-hand corner with the Swiss guards and the Pope. These three colours were true in Exodus, and royal gatekeepers today still wear various sorts of uniform. This might resonate with some of us very, very easily, but others of us aren't always up to speed with this imagery. We don't spend a lot of time reading about the tabernacle of the temple, and we may not be conscious of the degrees of access to the holy God.
You might be like me. You might have grown up in a low church tradition, a non-Anglican tradition, where any denomination like Anglicans and Catholics who claim to have special priests, there's something dodgy about them. That's me misunderstanding the modern idea, but it didn't help me to come to understand the Old Testament idea either, because biblical priests are doing something different, and again, it's unfortunate that we use the same English word, but this helps us to keep thinking about this strange phrase here in Exodus.
Gatekeeping is what God means when he invites Israel to be a kingdom of priests. It doesn't mean that the Israelites are a bunch of special people being ordained in the same way we think about church leaders today. It means that Israel is being given the responsibility for advertising and attracting the wider nations to know about and meet with the Lord God who lives in the center of their nation. For Israel, under the old covenant, they needed a bunch of human priests themselves to usher them, Israelites, into God's throne room, and just as within the nation of Israel, they had this series of gradations of holiness and some special priests, so God is inviting Israel as a whole nation to be a nation of priests to usher in the wider people of God's world.
Although the whole earth is mine, says God, you Israelites will be that special kingdom of priests who will usher others in. You Israelites will be the special ushers who draw in the wider world to God's presence. When we go back to the book of Genesis, we find that God blesses one family of Abraham, not for Abraham's benefit alone, but that through Abraham, all the families of the earth might be blessed. God blesses his people at every stage, not just for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the wider world.
And it's this gatekeeping role that the Israelites are then evaluated on as the rest of the Old Testament continues to unfold. How well and often how poorly are they doing at communicating God's blessings and expectations and invitations to the wider nations of the earth?
Living as God's Dwelling Place
One of the big challenges when we come to read the Bible, and particularly to read the Old Testament, is to know how we today should deal with any passage we're looking at. God no longer has a leather tent in the deserts of Palestine. God no longer has a stone temple in the middle of Jerusalem. And despite some Christian conspiracies, God isn't planning to restore a physical temple there. We saw last week that we can misunderstand the Bible's flow if we think that God merely goes through upgrading a series of physical buildings.
So it's no longer the case that God is holed up in grand buildings like cathedrals. God is no longer cloistered away in special buildings like this building here or the one that I'll attend tonight. We learned last week that God now dwells among his people directly. That's why I rather like pictures like this one. God's church, God's dwelling place, is now comprised of his people. God dwells with us wherever we are, whether we're gathered together in the building, yes, and when we're gathered together outside.
But even this picture is still presented looking like a church building. So I wonder if it fools us into thinking that our job as God's kingdom of priests, as God's group of special ushers, is to coax people inside a church building. It's so easy to find people thinking along those lines. I catch it happening at my church all the time.
Here, there might be the temptation to say, well, we've heard the ad for Mainly Music. Wouldn't it be great if I can invite a family with toddlers to come along, and then someone else gets to tell them about Jesus? If I volunteer for Kids at the Creek in September, how many local children might come to this property and meet God?
Now please don't mishear my use of those examples. Those are great ministries, along with many, many other things that happen on site here. But our vocation as a kingdom of priests extends beyond the building. Just as God himself dwells wherever we are through the week, so we can usher God's people into his presence wherever we find ourselves through the week.
Our interactions at home are part of our priestly vocation. Our interactions at school, or at work, at shops, as we drive the roads, as we sit on public transport, these are also avenues where our behaviour is part of advertising and attracting people to know the God of the universe. Every minute we spend on social media, we are counted among God's kingdom of priests, helping to guide people towards God's presence. We are God's treasured possession. We are on display to the wider world 24-7.
We might not think of ourselves as a geopolitical entity, but every Christian is part of God's holy nation, every day, everywhere. And as I cast this image from Exodus, it's a reminder for us to read and interpret the Bible carefully. I'm really encouraged if you're sitting there today, worrying that I'm just lifting stuff straight out of the Old Testament a bit too easily. We want to make sure that the regular preacher or the visiting preacher isn't just cherry-picking verses and doctrines that sound plausible.
I hope you're sitting there protesting in your head, hang on, everything we've just read about, they're the terms and conditions and the privileges for God's Old Testament chosen people, Israel. They were a specific geopolitical nation of people. They had a formal constitution ratified by God. And hang on, we Christians aren't automatically bound by those 613 commandments of the Old Testament. Maybe this visiting bloke is just being a bit too fast to cherry-pick some good-sounding ideas that sound like they've got some good New Testament application.
I hope you're cautious like that. I hope the incumbency committee, who I gather is getting feedback on the 14th of June, is going to be asking you to make sure that they choose preachers like that.
I want to commend that degree of caution because Christians can all too easily, instantly and conveniently grab parts of the Old Testament that may or may not apply today.
I'm going to be very good, you don't have to put your hand up, but we could go around the room and find out who's got a tattoo. We could go around the room and find out who's wearing poly cotton clothing.
You didn't have to put your hands up, but it is the staff team who are confessing. We won't get as far as asking who had bacon in the last 12 days and so on.
But we do... Time for you to leave, my dear.
We cherry-pick some parts of the Old Testament that we do want or that we don't want, and so we need to find out whether it's right to look at these terms and conditions for Israel before we launch into saying that these are parts of Christian identity. I can do this because I've also read some of the New Testament, and the first letter of Peter to the church, the New Testament church, helps us in our thinking on this topic. Indeed, Peter's not just writing to Christians with a Jewish background, he's writing to Christians with a Gentile background, like most of us in the room today. He does think that this idea of identity and vocation of Israel in Exodus does get transferred to the New Testament church.
And I hope you heard that in today's second reading from Phoebe. I'm not going to preach a whole second sermon, but let me highlight just two verses from 1 Peter chapter 2. Verse 5 is one of several New Testament verses that develops last week's discoveries. We Christians come to Jesus and, like living stones, we are being built together into a spiritual house. We Christians now, 24-7, wherever we're gathered, are also being built into the place where God dwells. And reinforcing a bit of today's passage, we're being built to be a holy priesthood.
And again, this isn't just convenience. This isn't just a quick computer search going, oh, look, a couple of words here match a couple of words there.
I have every confidence that Peter himself was spending time doing a Bible study, an Old Testament Bible study, on Exodus 19, because he's working out how the language of Exodus 19 does still apply to New Testament believers today.
Peter writes to these Gentile Christians that you, along with other faithful Israelites who accept Jesus, you Christians now constitute God's chosen people. You Christians are a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation. You are God's special possession.
That is, Peter assures us that everything we've been thinking about from Exodus this morning is fruitful for asking and answering those questions of, who am I? There are some things that God does differently between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but this is one thing which God continues in the same general way. We Christians are those that God chooses to put on display to the wider world. We are just that right collector's item that is the showpiece to God's wider world. We advertise God to the nations, and we help attract and facilitate those nations as they come towards God, and that's a terrifying prospect when we look at the way some of God's churches behave in God's world.
It's a terrifying prospect that this is the level against which God measures our status as holy, our behaviour as holy, our language as holy. We have been branded like we brand our animals. That's what the word holy means. You belong to God, and this isn't just an assurance for me when I wake up in the morning going, who am I? Okay, I belong to God, check the tat. No, everybody else on the street is also supposed to see that branding as well and goes, he's holy, we are holy, we are on display to the wider world, we are God's royal priesthood.
Whether or not Megan is with us today, whether or not Pedram is with us today, whether or not Rachel is with us today, we as God's gathered people advise the wider world that there is a God and you can draw nearer to him, and this is how we usher newcomers towards God's presence. And indeed, Peter's first letter spends lots more time giving more suggestions, outlining some clear commands about how God's church is to do this. If you've not read 1 Peter recently, it's a great letter to work with. And just the rest of verse nine gives us some more application about how we might live out our vocation.
You Christians are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession. Why? In this first instance, so that we may declare the praises of him who's called us out of darkness into his wonderful light. And we've been doing that this morning. May we continue to do that in this service and throughout the week, wherever, whenever. And there are many further ideas of what this looks like as the letter unfolds.
Here is something of our Christian identity. Here is something of the answer to who am I, or corporately, who are we? When you or a friend might be doubting your value, remind each other. We are part of God's treasured possession. God has saved up all his supermarket coupons, and he's cashed them in on us. And he's put us on display as part of his collection.
Here's a way of measuring something of our Christian job description and our life choices. Is my choice of activity today attracting the wider nations to know God? Are my words and actions declaring God's praises? Is my behavior appropriately reflecting the God who has collected me and put me on display, who has branded me as holy in the eyes of everybody?
It's a great measure for our choices as a church. Are we making sure that our gathered celebrations on Sunday and at other times, remember to declare God's praises? How are we ensuring that those praises are heard, not just inside the building or on this site, but around the suburb and throughout God's wider world? When we look at the status of God's church and the value or the lack of value it holds in many people's eyes, how are we confessing and apologizing for the past mistakes of parts of God's church? And are we celebrating God's past and ongoing works, not just for our own benefit and blessing, but for the benefit and blessing of the wider world?
The good news is we're reaching the end of the sermon. The bad news is that we're only just starting to ask many, many, many, many more questions that we should ask. We haven't got as far as the really obvious issues of wider mission. How well are we doing at supporting specific groups like CMS and BCA, specific ministries like Bible translation and others? What more is there that I need to do as an individual that we might do as a church to learn about what it means to be God's priesthood and what it is that God might have us do in his world to model his holiness, to live up to the branding?
We are God's chosen people. We are a royal priesthood. We are a holy nation that we may declare his praises. I'll commit us to this in prayer.
Our majestic and all-worthy God, already we praise you for calling us out of darkness and into your wonderful light. Would you spur us to remember to declare such praises with our every breath? Would we praise you for our privileged role in your world, that we are your special possession, that we are a people chosen to be a royal priesthood, that we are indeed a holy nation? Would we marvel at this privilege and would we strive to declare your praises with our every word and our every action? Would you continue to equip us to be ready and willing and able to introduce the wider nations of your world to join in your praises and to draw near your throne? Amen.
