The God Who Comes Down | Mark Hopkins | Leviticus 16

Well, my name is Mark Hopkins, and I have the privilege of serving as the missions and prayer pastor here at Long Hollow. We've been on staff a little over two and a half years, and it is such a privilege for us to call Long Hollow our church home and to serve as an everyday disciple with you every day, and I'm so grateful for all that God's doing around the world through this church. On this Memorial Day weekend, we also wanna recognize and honor all of you who represent family members and others who've given their lives so that we could have the freedom in this country to share the gospel boldly and loudly this morning, so thank you so much for that. Well, whether you're watching online, yeah, amen. Whether you're watching online or you're here at the Hendersonville campus or the Gallatin campus, I have a question for you that most of you are gonna immediately know the answer to. Every Sunday morning, when Pastor Robbie asks us to open up our Bibles, he tells us to say a phrase, and what is it? Word, and I wanna ask you a question this morning because I've been thinking about this the past few weeks, preparing for this message, so here's my copy of the Bible this morning. Word, this is God's word to you and to me, but here's another question I have for you,

and don't answer this one out loud because we're gonna spend the rest of the sermon talking about it. What is God doing in his word? From cover to cover, what is God trying to say to us? Because that means everything for today and tomorrow and for our lives and for our eternity. What is God doing in the Bible? And what is interesting is that if you take your Bible and you open it up to the first two chapters, don't do that, because we're actually gonna be on Leviticus 16, but if you were gonna take your Bibles and turn to the first two chapters, you see Genesis 1 and 2, and in Genesis 1 and 2, in Genesis 1 and 2, you see this theme. God creates us, we're not like the animals, we're mankind, humanity, and we can reason, we have moral capacity, we've been made to know God, to enjoy God, to relate to God, to experience God, and to reflect God for his glory, and so God made us, and then after he made Adam and Eve, he comes down into the garden and walks with them. Now, don't lose that thought. God comes down and walks with them. Well, then if you go to the end of your Bible, so Genesis 1 and 2 is one book end,

if you pick up your Bibles and don't turn there, because again, we're in Leviticus 16, but if you were to go to the final two chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21 and 22, we see this happening again. In the future, God is going to come down, the Bible says, and the curse of sin will be gone, and he's gonna make a new heaven and a new earth, and the Bible says he's going to dwell with us. He's gonna come down and be with us. The question is, why? And here's the answer, because we were made for his presence. Pastor Robbie's talked a lot over the past few weeks, as we've been following the life of Moses and God's people, it's all about the presence of God, and we were made for his presence, but here's a problem, and this is what Leviticus 16 is gonna answer for us. We've got a problem, because as soon as God marries his people, there in Exodus 24 on Mount Sinai, like Pastor preached a few weeks ago, before he literally finishes the marriage ceremony, they're already worshiping a golden calf, and Moses is like, God, you gotta go with this, and God's like, I'm not going with you, because if I go with you, I'm gonna destroy all of you. And so that leaves us with a question. If we were made for God's presence, and God is coming down to give himself away, how can sinful people like you and me

dwell in the presence of a holy God? That's what Leviticus 16 is all about. Would you turn there with me, and when you get there, you know what to say. Word, let's read it together. Leviticus 16, verse one and two, the Bible says, the Lord spoke to Moses after the death of two of Aaron's sons, don't forget this, when they approached the presence of the Lord and died. The Lord said to Moses, tell your brother Aaron, because he's the high priest, that he may not come whenever he wants into the holy place behind the curtain in front of the mercy seat on the ark, or he too will die, because I appear in the cloud above the mercy seat. So we've got a problem. God is coming down, Eden, Mount Sinai. After Mount Sinai, and by the way, you remember what happened on Mount Sinai? God is coming down to be with his people, but it's represented in earthquakes and thunder. And he said, you can't even touch the base of the mountain or you'll die because you all are sinful and I am so set apart and holy. But God is still wanting to come down. So he looks at Moses and he says, Moses, go outside of the camp and set up the tent of meeting. And while we're working on all these things, I want y'all to build a tabernacle

of which I am going to dwell in the most holy place. And I want you to put that tabernacle not outside the camp. I want you to put it in the center of the camp. Now, I want you to understand something this morning. God is moving towards his people. He wants to be with us. He wants to live with us. He wants to make his home in us and with us. But the problem is we're sinful and because he's holy and we're sinful, his presence is also dangerous. Aaron's sons walked into the presence of God in Leviticus 10, and we're not quite sure what they did, but they came into his presence casually and sinfully, not following his commands, and they fell over dead. And Moses warned Aaron from the Lord. Aaron, you can't just walk into the Holy of Holies. I don't care if you're the high priest or not. You cannot walk in there casually or you too will die. God wants to be with us, but we've got to deal with this sin problem in order for us to enjoy his presence. Now, to understand how all this came about, we've got to zoom back out of Leviticus 16 for a moment and answer a very important question. And here it is, point number one this morning. We need to be reminded that we were made to enjoy God's presence and glorify him. Now, you may be sitting here this morning and you may be asking yourself, why am I here?

And I'm not talking about at Long Hollow. I'm talking about on planet Earth. I was born April 5th, 1979. Why was I born? Why were you born? What did God make you for? Well, here's what the Bible teaches us. God made you for himself. God made us because he's so good and so wonderful and so valuable that he wanted to make a people that he could commune with so that he could give himself away to us. Now, I want to run something by you. You may have heard this before in the past. I've heard preachers get up and say, well, God made us because he was lonely. Well, I want to run this by you. If I take care of God's loneliness, we're both in big trouble. And by the way, I don't want a God who has an inadequacy or deficiency or a need. Do you? Don't let anyone fool you. God did not create us because he needed anything from us. God created us because he is so wonderful that he did not want to keep himself to himself. And so he made a people that could receive him and reflect him and walk with him and experience him and to know him so he could give himself away to us. That's why the psalmist said this.

Take a look. The psalmist said in Psalm 73, verse 25, Lord, who do I have in heaven but you? In other words, Lord, I don't want to go to heaven for pearly gates and golden streets and so I can see my loved ones who passed on as wonderful as that is. That's not what I'm after. Oh, and by the way, Lord, I desire nothing on earth but you. Not my career, not money, not fame, not approval from other people. But what am I after? But as for me, God's presence is my greatest good. God comes down to us because we were made for his presence. And you'll never understand the story of the Bible and you definitely won't understand Leviticus nor Leviticus 16 if we don't understand this paradox. God wants to come down and give his presence away but we're sinful so his presence is dangerous. It will destroy us. So God has to do something very special. He has to make a way. Well, before we talk about that, I want you to soak in for another moment about the presence of God and our need for him. I know we'll forget, I trusted Christ at the age of five. At the age of 18, God called me to be a pastor and I went to Bible College Seminary and a few years after that, I was the associate pastor at a church

and we were all busy and just like everybody is, everybody's busy, run around doing a lot of good things, ministry, checking the next thing off the list to do. And I was sitting in my office one day. I was sitting there working through the next email or the next call or whatever that needed to be done. And all of a sudden, though I had walked with the Lord at that point for over 20 years and had experienced the Lord and had the Holy Spirit and knew the goodness of his salvation, that day God did something he had never done before. He knocked on the door of my heart and he said, hey, preacher boy. He said, you're so busy going around doing the work of the ministry that you have left my presence somewhere. Like you're not valuing my presence. You forgot what you were made for. You thought you were made for productivity or taking care of the next need and you're all worked up and you're stressed out. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to stop what you're doing right now and get in your office floor and lay flat on the ground with your face on the floor. And I want you to enjoy my presence. To which I told the Lord while I was sitting there, Lord, I don't know if that's you or not, but I don't really have time for that right now. And he said, that's the problem.

And I don't forget, I was sitting there in the desk having a tug of war. Now you're sitting there going, you're a pastor and you're having a tug of war with this? Yes. In fact, in America, they say the average pastor, praise God, this isn't true of our pastor, the average pastor prays less than five minutes a day. And we wonder why our churches are so powerless. The people and the leaders are not loving and seeking the presence of the Lord because we forgot what we were made for. And so finally I knew if I don't get down in the floor and away from my desk and get before the Lord, I am so gonna be sinning. I've got to do this. So I got up and I laid down and I don't forget, there was a window on my office door. So pastors are walking by, they're in the church office, secretaries. And I felt a little embarrassed because I thought, you know, even though this is a church office, this isn't quite normal. We don't usually do it this way. And so I'm afraid that as people are walking to the restroom and pass by my office, they're gonna look down and think that I died. And the Lord said, get up, do it. Well, then I laid down. I laid completely down on the floor

and I'm like, all right, Lord. And the next thing the Holy Spirit said, and I'll be honest with you, there's only been a couple of other times this has ever happened, if that. The Holy Spirit just whispered and just gently said to me, take off your shoes. Take off my shoes. I heard that Moses did that at the burning bush. There's nothing magical about taking off your shoes. I'd never taken off my shoes before and I'd been praying for over 20 some years. But on this day, the Holy Spirit wanted me to take off my shoes. And I thought to myself, Lord, why am I taking off my shoes? And the Holy Spirit whispered in my heart, you've been so proud and you've been so arrogant running around doing the work of the ministry in your own power, in your own flesh, and sometimes for yourself, that you need to humble yourself, take off your shoes. And so I took off my shoes. And what happened next was life-changing. You know, I never will forget last week, Pastor Robbie said in his sermon, talking about the presence of God, he said, if you've ever experienced the manifested presence of God, it will mark your life and you will never be the same.

And that's what happened to me that day. For the next two hours, and it only felt like it was five minutes, it was almost like I just got caught up into the heavenlies and I didn't ask God for anything. I didn't really tell God anything about my life because that was the problem. We had been focused on my life. I spent two hours by the power of the Holy Spirit because it was not me just worshiping him for who he is, enjoying the magnificence and the holiness of his presence and telling him how wonderful he is, how much I needed him and how much I loved him. And I'm telling you, when I got up off the floor after two hours, I was a different man. The man that I was sitting in the desk was completely different than the man who got up off that floor. And to this day, that was 22 years ago, I still can go back to that time and know that that was one of those encounters, those burning bush moments for me that radically changed my life. And here's the thing, once you get a taste for the manifest presence of God, nothing else will satisfy. And I will say this, nothing else was ever meant to satisfy. The presence of God, you were made for his presence. That's why he comes down. But we're sinful.

Sin has separated us from the presence of God. We're born sinners. We're born in rebellion against God. We don't have a relationship with God. We don't have new life. And so we're in need of atonement. Our sin has to be dealt with. And so take a look at the second point as we walk into Leviticus 16. We see that God makes a way back to his presence through something very special called atonement. Now atonement is just a big word for Something innocent or someone innocent paying the price for our sins, the guilty in our place so that our sins can be forgiven and the presence of God now restored in our lives. That's what Leviticus 16 is all about. So as we just read in the passage, Moses is getting all these instructions. Leviticus 16 starts off, we've got a problem. God's presence wants to be with the people. The people are walking in casually and they're dying because they're walking in sin, they're walking in disobedience. And so God says, Moses, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna set up a tabernacle and my presence is gonna reside in the holy of holies. And there's a separation from my presence and sinful people. In fact, with the tabernacle,

there were the outer courts for the Gentiles. There was a court for the Israelites. There was a court for the priest. There was the holy place and then there was the most holy place. If you don't understand that, you won't be able to understand Leviticus, but there it is in simple form. There's the tabernacle. And here's the thing about the most holy place and take a look at this picture. The thing about the most holy place is that only one person could go in there and it was the high priest and they could only go in one day a year. That was the day of atonement that Leviticus 16 is talking about. And they could only enter one way and that was with blood. If you walked into the holy of holies, you see this golden encased box. This is the Ark of the Covenant. There's several things inside of this ark, but one of the things is the 10 commandments, a representation of God's holy law that reflects his justice and his goodness, this law that makes us sinners. Because when we look at the 10 commandments and see God's moral law, we realize that we haven't just broken it a little bit,

we break it all the time. And we're in need of forgiveness. We're in need of a rescuer. And so inside that box is the 10 commandments. On top of the box is something called the mercy seat. And on top of the mercy seat are two cherubim. Think Garden of Eden, garden the way back to the presence of God, the tree of life. You've heard Pastor Robbie talk about this. And there in the center of the cherubim, that special yellow glow is a representation of the presence of God. So Leviticus 16, if you're to read the rest of the chapter, here's what happens simply. One day a year, the high priest, in this case, it was Aaron. He was supposed to go back into the holy of holies and make atonement for all the sin of the people. Now they made sacrifices daily. This went on every day all throughout the year, but one day a year there needed to be a sin or an atonement that covered it all. So what he would have to do is he'd have to enter with blood and before he did that, because he too was a sinner, he would have to go clean himself. So he would ceremonially wash, put on new clothes of white linen, and he would walk into the holy of holies with the blood of a goat.

In fact, they brought the high priest two goats. The first goat would give his life. They would slit the goat's throat, they would take the blood, and the high priest would walk into the holy of holies and he would take the blood of that goat and he would sprinkle it like this on that mercy seat. And then there were horns around that mercy seat of the altar and he would take the blood and wipe it on the horns. And he would go through this process because God was teaching his people a lesson. You were made for my presence. I've come down to give myself away, but you are sinners and a massive price has to be paid for your sins so that I and you can come together. Then he took the second goat. Leviticus 16 tells us the second goat was called the scapegoat. And Aaron would literally take this goat and they wouldn't kill it. Aaron would put his hands on this goat and he would confess all the sins of the people on the goat. I don't know how long that took, but can you imagine for a moment if we did this now? Like, all right, God, it's Sunday, give us the goat. And we're confessing all the sins of everybody at Long Hollow on any given Sunday.

I don't know how long church is gonna last on that day, but it may be a while. He's confessing all the sins. And symbolically what God is showing is the sins are being laid on this goat. And then they would take the goat, leave the tabernacle, go outside the camp, go out far into the wilderness, and they would let the goat go and it would wander off. And you say, why is God doing this? God's showing us two things with those goats. One, sin has a price and the price is death. Blood has to be shed. be shed. Number two, not only does your sin need to be paid for, your sin, you need to be rid of it forever. It needs to be removed. That's the day of atonement. And then what happens as we walk through this day, we see that the camp was cleansed, the people would humble themselves before God, and then God would dwell with them another year. And here's what I want you to see. Leviticus is not about God pushing people away. It's about God making a way for sinful people to safely enjoy his presence. My wife, one time, she was going through a Bible study, like we are right now, as a church, going through the Old Testament, and we were reading through the Old Testament, and she was doing it with a ladies' group.

It wasn't here at Long Hollow, it was somewhere else. And one of the ladies looked at her and said, hey, by the way, I just skipped over the whole book of Leviticus. And my wife said, why did you do that? They said, it's just so boring. I mean, it's just all these rules and all these things. And my wife said, here's what you need to understand about Leviticus. Every verse, every bit of it is pointing to Jesus Christ. You see, Leviticus is not about God pushing us away. Leviticus is about God making a way so that we, a sinful people, not only get his presence, but can safely dwell there. On the day of atonement, they received mercy. They didn't get the death that they deserved for their sins. They received grace. They got cleansing and access to the presence of God. And so here's the question I have for you this morning. How can your sin and my sin be atoned for? Well, everything in Leviticus, the tabernacle, all the ceremonies, all the sacrifices, all the laws are pointing to one wonderful person that has forever changed our lives. He is the name above all names. He is first place. He is preeminent. His name is Jesus Christ. You see, it's interesting. God comes down in Eden.

God comes down at Mount Sinai. God comes outside the camp to the tent of meeting. God comes into the tabernacle in the center of the camp. He goes with the people. He then comes down in the temple and then he comes in a way that he's never come in human flesh. God the Son, over 2,000 years ago, stepped foot into our darkness. Truly God, truly man, yet without sin. And here's what John tells us about this arrival. The word, speaking of Christ, became flesh and dwelt among us. You know what the word dwelt there means? It's the Greek word for tabernacled. Jesus, the Son of God, became flesh and tabernacled among us. Why did he do that? Because that's what God's been doing all throughout the Bible. He wants to dwell with his people. So what does Jesus do? He comes and he becomes our once and for all perfect full atonement. Jesus Christ comes and he lives a perfect life in our place. He's never once proud. He's never once selfish. He's never once envious. He's never once jealous. He never looks at pornography.

He never does all the stuff we do. He never lies. He never steals. Every second of his life, he fully loves God and he fully loves people without fail. Jesus Christ lived a life that we should have lived, but didn't. Jesus Christ lived a life that we should have lived and we couldn't. We needed a rescuer. And here's the good news I have for you this morning. We have one. Jesus Christ lives all righteousness. And not like a high priest at the tabernacle who needed cleansing for his own sin, Jesus knew no sin so that you and I might have his righteousness. He, the spotless lamb of God, the true priest, our scapegoat, bearing our sin and shame, him spilling his blood. You see on the cross, it's not the blood of a goat that will satisfy. This is the blood of the living God. And there on Good Friday, he gives his life, bearing the wrath of God that we deserve for our sin so that you and I might be made righteous though we were unrighteous so that you and I might be forgiven. And what's the whole point? Well, here's what I heard one night.

Now, I heard this gospel that I just shared with you since I was five years old. In fact, I think I was born in the church nursery. What I just shared with you, I've heard my whole life, and here's what everybody always says when you get done sharing what I just shared. You know why I did all that? Everybody would say, so you could go to heaven when you die. Let me give you a new one. He did all that so that you could have God's presence. See, last time I checked, the Bible from one cover to cover is not about us getting out of earth and going somewhere. It's about God coming down and filling the earth with his presence and his glory and his kingdom. We're always saying, man, you need forgiveness of your sins. Where are you gonna spend eternity when you die? Yes, that's a very important question, but it's always about what we're doing to escape here, to go somewhere so that we don't have to bear punishment. It's so much more than that. Jesus is paying the ultimate price so that you could have the greatest good. It's God, and not just God with you, God in you. That leads us to this final point. Take a look. God comes again. Jesus dies, he rises again on the third day,

and 50 days later, we have a special day called Pentecost. On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes down. Anybody see a theme here? Everybody say, God comes down. The Holy Spirit comes down. And something happened that Moses could not even fathom. Something happened that the high priest at the tabernacle in Leviticus 16 couldn't even imagine. All of a sudden, the Holy of Holies is not behind a veil in the tabernacle. All of a sudden, because of the finished work of Jesus and the price that he paid in the once and for all, all of a sudden, those who call on his name in faith, their bodies become the temple of the Holy of Holies, and God himself comes to be in them, not just with them. Someone put it this way. Jesus in you is better than Jesus beside you. I never forget, growing up as a young Christian, we always would be like, man, what would it be like to see all the plagues, you know, and Exodus, and God working out his miracles? Man, if you saw that, your life would be changed, and it would be changed. And then we'd go on and we'd say, man, what would it be like if Jesus just walked in the room right now? Buddy, I sure could use Jesus walking in the room right now and give me some wisdom. And all of a sudden, as New Testament believers, new covenant believers, we have forgotten what we have

that the whole Bible is pointing us towards. We don't just have God with us. If you know Jesus, you've got God in you 24-7. You know, everybody's talking about the UFO files, and we won't even get off on that. Talk to Pastor Robbie about that, all right? We won't even get off on that, but can I say something to you? If you know Jesus, you've had an alien invasion. God has come to live in you. And your life and my life is no longer about us. It's about Christ who died for us and rose again. It's about not you being in control, you doing your thing, you wanting what you want. It's about God coming to take up residence in you. He is the Holy of Holies, making your life holy, and his holiness going forth out of your life, going public, and that's his glory. And that's what we were made for. And only then will we be truly satisfied. So God now comes to live in and dwell with his people. And his presence transforms us. I love what Jesus said in John chapter 14. Jesus said, hey guys, there's something really good coming. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. My father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him, in him. Jesus says this before he dies. Who's he talking about? The Holy Spirit.

Why? Because God comes down because we were made for his presence. I wanna close with this story. I know we'll forget years ago, my son Garrett, he's the student ministry pastor over at the Gallatin Campus, and so proud of him. And it's a joy, it's a joy to, God called us both to be pastors. We didn't force that on him. He was called just like I was. And we get to serve at the same church. And it's a joy. And about a week ago, he said, dad, what are you preaching on? And I told him, he said, dad, that reminds me. You remember that time that God changed my life in middle school? I said, what are you talking about? and it reminded me of this story. About 15 years ago, I was pastoring a church in Roanoke, Virginia, and we used to do something called the men's prayer advance. It's where we would bring men together for three days, and the whole goal was to worship God in song, hear preaching, and pray, and then we would eat because we're Baptist. And that's what we did for three days. Preach, worship, pray, encounter the presence of God, eat, and grow together.

And on Friday night, that was the night that you bring your sons. If you had a son, you were to bring your son so that they got to get in on the presence of God with you. And so on that Friday night, a lot of us brought our boys, and a lot of guys my age at that time had middle school boys, and so Garrett was, I don't know, 12 or 13 years old, seventh, eighth grade. Well, that night when all the preaching was over, it was nine o'clock at night, and you didn't get to go home. At nine o'clock is when you had another prayer meeting. And so all the men, all the dads, went to another part of the church and prayed, and we sent all of our boys over to the student building who was gonna, so that they could pray with their youth leaders. Well, we started praying at nine o'clock, and my group was done at maybe 11 o'clock, and when we got done, it was a powerful time. God was working in our lives, but I thought to myself, I thought, man, what in the world? I bet my son is about to die. I gotta get over to the student building and pick him up. There's no way that they've been praying for two hours, and he is probably wondering, Dad, are you ever coming? Let's go home. I know I'll forget what happened. I got over to the student building,

and when I walked in, I noticed there were some other dads standing there, and they were kind of quiet, but from the living room of the student building, I thought I heard laughter or yelling. And obviously you would expect that from sixth, seventh, and eighth grade boys. And so I almost barged right in, and literally, I almost walked into the living room. It was like, hey, Garrett, where are you? Let's go home. And I walked in, and what I saw, I'll never forget. There, prostrated on the floor, face down, were 20 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade boys. And they were weeping. So let's see. Sure, it gets me every time. What I thought was yelling and laughing, it was wailing. And for two hours, they had been enjoying the presence of God. Not video games, not Netflix, not their phones. Anybody ever just wanna dropkick your phone? They were drinking up the one they were made for. And that also required confession of sin. And when I walked in, they were wailing because they were confessing sin. To my knowledge, all the boys in there had already trusted Jesus. All their sin had been forgiven. But what they realized was

that though their sin had been forgiven, and they were saved, and they had a relationship with Him, and He had come to live inside of them, they had been grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit, and their intimacy with His presence was not there. And so they had to confess their sin, like 1 John 1, 9 says. I heard them confessing things that I was a little shocked about. And then all of a sudden, they moved to a second phase of confession. They started confessing the sins of their dads. And I was like, oh my, I'm the pastor. And then when they got done confessing the sins of their dads, they started confessing the sins of the church, kind of like Aaron did with that scapegoat. This went on for another 45 minutes to another hour. For three hours, those boys wailed, cried before the Lord on their hands and knees. And when they got done, my son stood up. I mean, I did not have words. I was speechless. The Spirit of God and His presence was so palatable in the room, you could just reach out and touch it. Holiness. And you know, when you've been in the presence of God, because when you've been in the presence of God, you're changed.

Like when everybody got up, they didn't talk about the ball game. They didn't talk about anything except God. Holy is His name. I walked with my son out to the car. I didn't really know what to say. I just wasn't expecting this. We got in the car. He said, dad. I said, yeah, bud. He said, tonight changed my life. I said, son, what about tonight changed your life? He goes, dad, the presence. of God. He said, dad, God is so good. I didn't know he was this good. He said, dad, I've been saved for several years. Dad, you've told me the gospel as long, I mean, since I was this high. He said, I have never experienced the presence of God like that. He said, dad, I feel so full, so satisfied. And dad, let me tell you something else. I don't have any desire for sin. I'm like, amen. By the way, two thirds of the battle in all of our lives is the want-tos. We gotta have our want-tos changed, our hearts changed. Can I run something by you? When was the last time the Holy Spirit in you,

the presence of God, you were so close to him because everything was out of the way, that you lost all your taste buds for selfishness and sin. And all you wanted was him. Because remember, it's not about dying and going up to a cloud somewhere. The whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation is about God coming down to be with us. And so we end where we began. In the future, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For this old first heaven and first earth had passed away. And the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. Remember, Pastor Robbie preached on this a few weeks ago. There was a marriage ceremony between God and his people there on Mount Sinai. And that marriage continues with us, all who know Jesus. Then I heard a loud voice from the throne. Look, God's dwelling is with humanity. And he will live with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and will be their God. Not Gabriel, not Mark, not Pastor Robbie, but God himself is gonna wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Grief will be no more. Crying no more.

Pain no more. Why? Because sin is completely gone forever. And the whole earth, God is the temple. Why? Because that's been the goal all along, that we would enjoy him, make much of him, and that he would be with us. So question for you this morning, what's your life been all about lately? If it's not the presence of God, you're off story. And maybe that's why we're so frustrated and dry. And unfulfilled. The story is about God in you, God with you, God for you, so that you could have him, be with him, enjoy him and make much of him with your life. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your goodness this morning. Father, we thank you so much for your presence. The nearness of God is our good. And Father, we thank you for making a way so that we wouldn't die in your presence as sinful people, but that we not only could have your presence, but that you would come and live inside of us and you would adopt us as your own. And you would give us all the rights and privileges of being your children, a new life, a new heart, a new vision, your Holy Spirit.

And now, because you are holy and live in us, how much more should we now be holy people? To cooperate with the holy of holies in us so that you can change us and we manifest your goodness to a lost and dying world. In Jesus' name, amen.