Kingdom Building

(Sermon Outline)

1)      The Book of Exodus

a)      Exodus is about the birth of a nation, described variously as an am (people), goy (nation), kahal (congregation), and edah (community). No sooner do we see this than we understand what the Jewish project was intended from the very outset to be. It is about politics, society, and the principles on which a people can come together to form associations. It is about justice, freedom and the rule of law. It is about the sanctity of life and human dignity. Ultimately it is about the use and misuse of power.[1]

b)      My experience of the OT

c)       The Shadows and Substance – we learn what God intends to do through His people.

d)      Questions and concerns lead to revelation.

e)      I remember reading through Exodus and wondering why it seems to be a bunch of unorganized material – it is not unorganized at all!  The book is about building a nation!

2)      Rabbi Sacks and Tony Blair

a)      On a plane – read the bible nightly – curious about the book – bible studies

i)        Books and Conversations vs. “reading the bible”

b)      “The boring bit” – the tabernacle – “it does go on, doesn’t it?”

c)       Answer – it is about building a home for the divine presence.

i)        Recreation account – a shadow of restoring what was lost in the fall.

ii)      Satisfied Tony Blair but not a Rabbi – QUESTION – why was the story in Exodus and not Leviticus?

3)      CONCERN – Multi-culturalism

a)      Having embraced multiculturalism – the idea that there should be no dominant culture in the ethnically diverse societies of contemporary Europe – these countries discovered that far from mitigating social conflict, the new doctrine exacerbated it. Far from promoting social integration, it was leading to segregation. It did not make societies more tolerant, but less so. The Dutch put it well. Tolerance, they said, ignores differences; multiculturalism makes an issue of them at every point.

b)      REVELATION – Was there – people began to ask – a way of moving beyond multiculturalism without sacrificing the idea of an inclusive society? It was then that my mind went back to the unanswered question about the place of the story of the Tabernacle within the book of Exodus. If the theme of Exodus is nation-building, then this is the book to which we should turn if we would seek biblical insight into the contemporary fragmentation of society. Moses’ challenge was precisely this: how to turn a group of escaping slaves into a cohesive nation.

c)       If you want to create a group with a sense of collective identity, get them to build something together. It is not what happens to us, but what we do, that gives us identity and responsibility . What transformed the Israelites is not what God did for them but what they did for God.

d)      Until the making of the Tabernacle, the story of the Israelites is a sequence of events in which God acted for the people. He liberated them, divided the sea for them, gave them water from a rock and food from heaven. During all that time, they quarrelled and complained. Yet throughout the construction of the Tabernacle, there were no quarrels, no complaints.

e)      It was now clear to me precisely why the story of the Tabernacle belongs in Exodus, not Leviticus – because it is a story about nation-building. The most effective way of transforming individuals into a group is by setting them a task they can only achieve as a group. This cuts across all other divisions, tribal, social and cultural. A nation does not depend on shared ethnicity. It can arise simply from the sense of collective responsibility that emerges from the performance of a shared task.

4)      Building the tabernacle

a)      Exodus 35:4–5 (NKJV) — 4 And Moses spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, “This is the thing which the Lord commanded, saying: 5 ‘Take from among you an offering to the Lord. Whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it as an offering to the Lord.

b)      Exodus 36:3–7 (NKJV) — 3 And they received from Moses all the offering which the children of Israel had brought for the work of the service of making the sanctuary. So they continued bringing to him freewill offerings every morning. 4 Then all the craftsmen who were doing all the work of the sanctuary came, each from the work he was doing, 5 and they spoke to Moses, saying, “The people bring much more than enough for the service of the work which the Lord commanded us to do.”

5)      Building the Temple

a)      1 Kings 5:13–17 (NKJV) — 13 Then King Solomon raised up a labor force out of all Israel; and the labor force was thirty thousand men. 14 And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month in shifts: they were one month in Lebanon and two months at home; Adoniram was in charge of the labor force. 15 Solomon had seventy thousand who carried burdens, and eighty thousand who quarried stone in the mountains, 16 besides three thousand three hundred from the chiefs of Solomon’s deputies, who supervised the people who labored in the work. 17 And the king commanded them to quarry large stones, costly stones, and hewn stones, to lay the foundation of the temple.

6)      Building the True Temple

a)      Ephesians 4:15–16 (NKJV) — 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.