GYC 2013: Before Men and Angels

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Sanctuary: How Sinners Can Safely Approach a Holy God

Steve Bauer

01-Overview and Approaches to the Sanctuary

This message was presented at the GYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

We want to welcome the fitness fanatics who have hiked all the way over to this remote location.

Stephen Bauer from Southern Adventist University.

I teach theology and ethics and sometimes pinch hit in biblical Hebrew.

And I like to say when I teach Hebrew that when I get done I hope it's not all Greek to them.

And so I'm deriving from some of my sanctuary materials that I do in Christian theology.

And Eric Lowe asked me to present here, so it's a pleasure.

My first GYC, I've done an SEYC, and here comes some more faithful few.

Before I get started, why don't we have a word of prayer?

I wanna thank you, Lord, for being with us and as we Probe this wonderful topic, guide and direct us, me with those here and those who listen later through the internet, that your spirit would open our hearts in Jesus' name, amen.

I'm not certain I'll use all quote 50 minutes.

I figure the seat can only stand so much, but we'll see how many slides.

I usually don't do this with slides, so I'm trying something new.

David Vetter, known as the Bubble Boy, was born in 1971 with severe combined immunodeficiency, SCID for short, and he was forced to live in a specially constructed, sterile, plastic bubble from birth until his death at age 12.

Water, air, food, diapers, clothes, all had to be sterilized before being put into his chamber.

So they had a joining chamber where they sterilized it in ethylene oxide gas for 4 hours at 140 degrees.

Then it had to be aerated for 1 to 7 days.

Here is a picture of him in his chamber, the airlock, and I presume the sterilization chamber.

You can't touch him because the bacteria from your skin will infect him and kill him.

And so all touch has to be through these gloves that are built in to the bubble this way.

NASA did make him a little space suit but it was so cumbersome he only used it a few times where he could get out of his bubble and actually interact a bit.

You can see they put their logo there on it.

But think about it now from the mother's perspective and the father's perspective.

You have a child that you love, but if you kiss him or touch him you'll kill him.

And the heartache of always having a barrier between you and your child.

And I thought, what an illustration of God's problem.

But if he comes near to us his glory will kill us.

And so God's got a problem he's got to solve.

How can I get close to my child and show him I love him without killing him?

Imagine a life, you can't even really hug your child unless he's in the space suit.

And that didn't come along for years, you know.

All the natural instincts have to be thwarted.

You can do nothing spontaneously because it's all got to go through that gas and a day to 7 of cooling off, right?

And you want to be close and yet, so close, yet so far.

God has a similar problem in that He wants to be close to us and yet, if he gets direct contact, it would kill us.

And so we find in the sanctuary, God says, let them make me a sanctuary, Exodus 25, that I may dwell in their midst.

In other words, to make it possible for me to dwell in their midst.

And in Exodus 33, after the golden calf, he says, I won't go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.

If for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you.

So take off your ornaments that I may know what to do with you." again, direct contact with God as sinful man, his glory will be a consuming, destructive fire.

How can God draw near to man and draw man near to himself.

He says, I'm going to do it through the sanctuary.

So the goal of the sanctuary is to make it possible for man and God to come together.

It's not to make it difficult, it's to make it safe.

And sometimes the way we present the sanctuary gets so complicated that you walk away with this big mass of information and you're saying, what does this mean to me in real life?

I think God intended the sanctuary to be simple sanctuary to be simple and understandable, not complicated, and I guess complicated is enough.

And Sometimes when I've read on the sanctuary or listened on the sanctuary, you know, there were 3 flowers on the corner of the table and that represents the Trinity and there were, you know, blue threads and you have all this stimulation, you go home and say, so what?

And I'd like to propose that there's an easier way to approach a sanctuary.

But before we get to that easier way, let's just review our geography.

For those who just came in, we've got some handouts here that have a little map of the sanctuary that I'm about to use.

I'm wondering if we just kind of grab a chair and put it in the middle of that junction, then people will see it when they come in.

Now for our cartographers, the map is upside down so that we can go left or right on it.

So north is down, as you can see with the little compass rows here.

And of course, this is not to scale or it wouldn't fit in my screen.

We have a courtyard that surrounded the whole complex with a gate on the east.

And so the direction of the worship was oriented toward the west.

And I'm thinking spontaneously of that passage in Ezekiel, around 8 and 9, where the people are in the courtyard and they were facing the rising sun.

So if you're in the courtyard facing the rising sun, where is the sanctuary relative to you?

And I've wondered perhaps if that might symbolize the fact that, see, worshipping the rising sun was what pagans did, and God says, I'm going to take my worship and make it 180 degrees different.

I think that God calls us to be different from the world.

Not that there won't be common elements because there are the artistry and so forth that the sanctuary borrows from the local culture of art and so forth and so on.

But the philosophical, theological orientation of the worship and content of the worship was 180 degrees out of kilter with the pagans around them.

They may have used local musical forms and local art forms and local dress forms, et cetera, but the doctrinal, theological, spiritual, philosophical content was radically different in worldview from what was around them.

And it's that worldview issue that I think we point to here in the sanctuary.

And So we have this courtyard with 1 way in and then in the outer outside, well before we get to the outside, we have the sanctuary itself with the holy place, its door also on the east end, and then that was the only way to the most holy place.

Now we go to the furnishings, and again we'll start out in the courtyard in the open air.

We have the bronze altar of burnt offering.

King James says brass, but brass hadn't been invented yet, and so this is the late Bronze Age.

Then we go into the holy place and everything under cover is gold.

So we have the golden lamp stand on the south and this is a replica that I photographed on display in Jerusalem.

And according to their archeological research, because of course they believe that they're going to rebuild the temple and that they're going to reinstitute the sacrifices.

And so they have built apparently the furnishings and they're waiting until God miraculously gets rid of that dome of the rock so they can rebuild their sanctuary.

And in the meantime, they have this out in a Lexan case out in the open air where you can walk around it and look at it.

And so I thought that was a very interesting, around as tall as me.

And they had a whole excursus on it and longing for the day when it would be put into use in a proper sanctuary across the valley on the Temple Mountain.

We also have the table of showbread, also called the bread of the presence on the north side.

The golden altar of incense before the veil.

And finally the Ark of the Covenant in the most holy place.

Now those of us who have done our Bible readings, you got 6 chapters of, build a table so many cubits long, so many cubits wide, so many cubits tall, and put 3 flowers on this corner and 2 flowers on that corner and 3 leaves here and you know gory detail after detail and when you're trying to read your Bible through in the year this is the section that kills me after 35th flower you know you And you wade through it for 6 chapters.

Detail after detail after detail after detail, ad nauseum.

And then when it's all said and done, you have the golden calf incident, and then Moses builds it.

He puts so many flowers on this corner, and so many leaves on that corner, and you go through it all over again.

And you're saying, Lord, if this is your holy word, why is all this stuff here?

02-The Ministry and Protocol of Forgiveness, Part 1

This message was presented at the DYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.dycweb.org.

In session 1 we were proposing that the sanctuary can be a lot more simple than we make it out to be, and that ultimately it is the protocol God made to make contact between God and man possible and safe, because God's glory would consume us if there was not something to deal with the sin problem.

And so This is the action of a loving God who wants to draw near to us, not of some kind of fickle God who's trying to make it difficult.

And sometimes I think we make the sanctuary more difficult.

We have our map on the board here, and again I put north down so that our flow will go left to right, even though we're going east to west, so the map is upside down from normal orientations here.

This protocol, 1 more review, the whole sanctuary process is an act of faith because you're trusting God is not baiting you and switching you the way Jehu did to the Baal worshippers, that he actually will do what he said he will do.

And so you are coming in faith that God is faithful and not deceiving you in some way.

Now this protocol again which we can do in our prayer time starts at the gate.

You don't get into the premises until you enter the gate.

Psalms 100 verse 4, enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise.

Is it, I'm thankful I have a nice home and a car and heat and in my case during Christmas in Maine with no power at 0, a good wood stove and so forth.

Certainly, should we be thanking God for those things?

But is there more to what we're entering with thanksgiving for?

See, what was the difference between Cain and Abel?

See, in the sacrificial system, this would be a thank offering.

Thank you God for blessing my fields and so forth and so on.

What's Cain saying by giving thanks but nothing else?

He says, there's no problem with us, I don't need a sacrifice.

Thank you God for being a nice guy, but there's no real issue here.

He's not accepting God's assessment that there's a problem that needs addressing.

But Cain doesn't submit because he doesn't want to admit there's a problem.

Everything's, I love you, you're a good guy, I'm a good guy.

But he won't accept God's judgment of his problem.

That's why we need more, because we can be thankful for our house, car, generator, Whatever, right?

Family, wife, children, husband, uncles, aunts, whatever, grandparents.

We can be thankful for all these things and still be unrepentant, right?

So how is it that we enter with thanksgiving and not be like Cain?

That God has provided a protocol and a way to approach him safely.

And by recognizing that you just can't approach God any old way, that there is a safe way and an unsafe way, that makes you acknowledge there's a problem that needs fixing.

So we have to come to God, surrendered to his assessment of our condition.

And we have to trust that assessment more than our own assessment.

Now, what case in the New Testament illustrates that problem?

But you say, I am rich, increased with it.

But then God says, you say, you're rich, et cetera, et cetera, But I say, you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

Do I accept God's assessment or do I stick with my own assessment?

And when your own assessment says everything's hunky-dory, etc., then you're comfortable and you get lukewarm.

Which is why Christ introduces himself to that church as the faithful and true witness.

Because what he's about to tell them is so contrary to their opinion, they're not going to want to believe it.

So when we enter with thanksgiving, we're yielding our Laodicean self-judgment and we're acknowledging God, I accept your judgment, I'm a sinner in trouble who needs help.

And I'm coming because I'm thankful you've made a way.

Anyone can be happy for the nice house, car, toothbrush, or whatever.

But not anyone is thankful that God made a way in spite of their condition.

But there's more to this protocol of the gate.

No 1 forced you to go to the sanctuary at sword point, spear point, knife point, gun point, or any other kind of point.

You came because you You came because you were responding to God's promise and invitation.

Now granted for efficiency the heads of household represented and so the family kind of comes through the head of household, but still you came voluntarily, not by force.

We can't force people into the kingdom of God.

You could not send your servant to offer sacrifice for you.

You couldn't send your neighbor to offer sacrifice for you, and once you were an adult, you don't send mommy and daddy to sacrifice for you.

You just can't trust the pastor to do it for you, or mommy to do it for you, or the pathfinder leader to do it for you, etc., etc.

And so, I'm coming thankful that in spite of my sinful ways and slavery to sin that God has made a way of deliverance, I come voluntarily in response to God.

I'm not forced into this, but I got to do it myself.

So I recall this is the 1 where David talks about, if I cherish iniquity in my heart you won't forgive me, but I've come with humble, I've confessed my sin, the humble and contrite heart God won't throw out, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

I'm forgetting what Proverbs is, so Let's open to it.

The wonders of electronics when they work.

Proverbs 15, The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.

God is looking for more than payment of penalty.

You had the problem in the prophets where he says, I'm sick of your sacrifices, you just sacrifice and keep on.

I'm rich enough to pay the speeding fines so I keep speeding.

The purpose of the sanctuary is not to enable rebellion and regression, and hence the first step of obeying the gospel is to submit to God's appointed way, right?

We don't negotiate, and that's the humility here.

04-The Day of Atonement, Part 1

I want to continue in the issue of forgiveness because what does that mean?

As I'm pulling out of a forgiveness seminar, when God forgives us, what's going on?

Some of you remember this story of Josef Fritzl who was caught after holding his daughter captive for 24 years.

He incarcerated her in a basement dungeon at age 18 and she was not delivered until she was 42.

3 of the children, and of course when he incarcerated her, he forced her to write a note that she had joined some strange cult somewhere and couldn't be known where she was and all this stuff.

And then when she had the first baby, He made her write a note that the cult didn't allow her to have a baby, and so she dropped it off on the door.

It appears mysteriously on the front doorstep during the night.

And so he and his wife heroically adopt this child and are raising it.

And to make a long story short, 3 of the 7 had that experience of being raised, thinking they were abandoned by a mother and a cult.

The other 3, the other 4 I should say, remained in the dungeon with their mother.

1 died a very few months old and he cremated it in his own furnace.

1 of them was up 10, 12, 13 years old, has never been out of 800 square feet underground, never seen the sun, never seen grass, et cetera, et cetera.

Finally, 1 of the kids was deathly sick in the dungeon and the daughter convinced him to take the kid to the hospital and that eventually broke the case loose and she was rescued, et cetera.

I have to ask the question though, if you are Elizabeth Fritzl, the daughter who was raped thousands of times and impregnated at least 7 times by your own father, what does it mean to forgive your father?

I was a young pastor in the Greater New York Conference.

Samantha was an adoptee, an Asian adoptee, and sometime after the adoption, when she was, I don't know, between 2 and 4 or so, the adoptive parents divorced, and she went with the mother, which is very typical in those days, particularly in the early 80s.

Mom, I'm not sure if mom was an Adventist yet, somewhere in this process mom became an Adventist.

She was also an alcoholic who went sober through AA and all this.

And she remarried a non-Adventist and somewhere in there she's the Adventist, The new husband stepfather figure is a non-Adventist.

At age 15, Samantha tried to commit suicide by jumping in front of a city bus, but the bus stopped in time to spare her life.

She then tried, They lived in a condo that was wood frame.

And so they got her to the school counselor.

And after some probing, it finally came out that the stepfather had been sexually molesting her from age 7 to 15 with full privileges starting around age 12.

I got on the case because I knew the woman from other meetings.

They were from a neighboring district of mine.

Because a literature evangelist with pedophilic tendencies had been a member of my church and had left before I got there.

I'm here like 3 weeks and all this is coming down on me, you know.

And so she mentioned his passes at her that she had resisted.

And so as the pastor of that church, their conference is trying to get me up to speed.

Well, of course, the father got arrested and put in the county jail.

And the daughter gets, because of her suicide attempts, gets put in the county psych hospital.

And the irony was is that you had the county hospital with the psych ward on the same property a quarter of a mile away is the jail where the dad is, where the stepdad is.

And so their pastor had gone through the hoops and visited the girl in the psych center.

Then he got in his car and he drove out down the quarter mile in and he visited the non-adventist father figure in jail.

And the psych people thought, oh here we go, this is a Christian pastor trying to broker a forgiveness deal so she won't press charges.

And so they made a ruling that no Adventist pastors could make visits in that hospital, very logical ruling.

And finally, the deal was the guy who visited both can visit the father in prison, but not the girl.

Find a new Adventist pastor who will visit the girl, but not the father.

Of course, question number 1 is, for Samantha to forgive her father, what does that mean?

I went in because now I had to have face-to-face with the head psychiatrist, you know, to get the rules of engagement, what I'm not allowed to do and do and so forth.

I still remember walking into her office.

She had memorabilia of a religion other than Christianity all over her office.

She was a high-powered executive MD psychiatrist.

I was ushered into a large office and you had to walk like 10 yards across the carpet to get to her desk that she's sitting behind.

I entered the room, walked up to her, she said not a word.

Finally she pointed at a chair, I sat down.

First words out of her mouth were not hello, nice to meet you or anything like that.

Series

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Sanctuary: How Sinners Can Safely Approach a Holy God

05-The Day of Atonement, Part 2

Transcript

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