You Think You’ve Messed Up Too Much… You Haven’t | Cloud Of Witnesses | Pastor Kurt Brodbeck

Well, welcome to Northview. My name is Kurt Brodbeck. I serve as one of the executive pastors here, and I am just excited as I get to share with you today as we continue through a series we've been doing all of 2026. We are looking at the historical figures of the Bible, and this is intentional, because why? We want you to have confidence that as you approach God's word for yourself that you understand the story of the Bible, you understand the characters of the Bible, and that you can begin to really digest the Bible for yourself. Don't just take my word for it. Don't just take Pastor CJ's word for it. Like, read God's word, understand it. It's gonna change your life as you do. But also, as you read God's word, you start to get to know some of these historical figures, you get to know the characters, and all of a sudden you start to realize they were some messed up individuals, which is great, because I'm looking at a lot of messed up individuals right now, and you're looking at one too, right? Each one of us, we have these flaws, these failures, and we know it about ourselves, right? And we often think, oh, man, we're screwed up. There's no way God could use us.

We get into the comparison game. We're like, yeah, that guy, he's got it all together. I'm not him. Man, that person, they got all the talents and the gifts in the world. I'm not him. As we read scripture, hopefully it gives you some confidence to go, wait a second. Despite my failure, maybe God can use me. But don't take my word for it. Again, every time somebody speaks from this platform or any stage or your social media, you need to test it against God's word. Today, let's test this against God's word. What does God say about you? Let's start from the very beginning. We're gonna start in Genesis chapter one, and it says this, so God created human beings, what? In his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. Here's the first thing we see. It says, God created you, he created me, in his image. What does that mean? It doesn't mean you have God's nose. You don't have God's hairline, especially some of you men. I bet God has like an awesome set of hair. Like I think he's just like, this flow is great. So, no, we don't have that, what do we have? Well, God, he has so many characteristics,

but he chooses to willingly put some of his characteristics inside of you. Now, you don't have all of them, you are not God. But God in his goodness, he puts some of those inside of you and you bear his image in the world. Meaning that if you bear his image, he put purpose and intention in your life. Let's go to Ephesians, what it says about you. It says, for we are God's masterpiece. Now, any of you have ever created a piece of art before, whether it was in kindergarten or that little coil pot snake thing that you made when you were in fourth grade, you know whether you are proud of it or not. And if you weren't proud of it, you would never call it a masterpiece. Here I see scripture say that we are God's masterpiece. Here's what I think you need to take out of this. Whether you realize it or not, God looks at his creation and he says, wow, I'm proud of that. Despite what you've done, despite where you've been, there's a God who looks past that and says, I can use that, that's good. Because we're created as God's masterpiece, created anew in Christ Jesus, why? So that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. The psalmist David, he puts it this way in Psalm 139, he says, you made all the delicate inner parts of my body

and you knit me together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex. Your workmanship is marvelous. How well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion and as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment that was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious, think about this, how precious, God, are your thoughts about me? Oh God, they cannot be numbered. I can't even count them. They outnumber the grains of sand and when I wake up, you are still with me. The psalmist says, God, you've thought about me. You've created me with intention and here's what I would say. Do you realize what a gift that is? Can you imagine living a life where you had no idea that you had purpose? I mean, life would be meaningless. But God, he is so good. He could have created each one of us just as his creation to follow his will and just to be robots that walked around, but no, he gave us free will, and then he put uniqueness inside every single one of us. Why? Because it gives meaning to your life.

He actually wants to use you for something. And today, we're gonna jump into a character in the Bible, and what I wanna do is I wanna study a man named Aaron. Because as we study it, I hope that you'll be able to see, man, here's a real person who God used in real ways, who committed a really great sin, yet God, he still wants to redeem him. And I hope you could relate to it and say, well, I'm a real person who God's putting something unique in me, but I create really great sin, but God could probably use me. Now, as we jump into this, I do wanna give you a little context so that we can jump into it and all be on the same page. So if you've been with us, you've heard Pastor CJ over this 2026, he's kind of painting the picture, helping us understand the arc of God's story. And he started off, and he started talking about three important people, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, Abraham, Abraham, God comes to Abraham and says, hey, I am going to reveal myself to the world through your family, Abraham, and I'm gonna create your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I'm gonna make you into a great nation. Abraham has a son, his name is Isaac. Isaac has a son, his name is Jacob.

And God changes Jacob's name to Israel. We all know about Israel, right? So God changed Jacob's name to Israel. Israel had 12 sons. These 12 sons, they become the 12 tribes of Israel. It's gonna be important as we continue to study and understand the arc of the Bible, these 12 tribes, because God then puts these 12 tribes later after our story into the promised land and gives them each a portion of the land. But here's what you need to know. Not all 12 tribes were blessed. In fact, Jacob, Israel, when he's on his deathbed, he goes to bless his sons, and there's two of them that he actually doesn't bless, he curses them. And one of those sons has a son named Levi. And Jacob says, because in your anger, you used your sword for violence, and because you kill an hamstring oxen at your own will, Levi, you'll be cursed. And where all these others will be blessed, you will not have a land for your own. And that's important, because all of Levi's descendants, they're known as Levites. Hold that into your head, because we're about to talk about a guy who was a Levite, Aaron. Now, Aaron was the brother of Moses. So last week, if you were here, Pastor CJ talked

about the life of Moses and how God actually used Moses to help release the Israelites from slavery out of Egypt. He leads them through the Red Sea, and he leads them as they wander through the desert and leads them all the way up into the promised land, although Moses doesn't get to go in. If you haven't watched that message, it's available on YouTube, it's on our app. I would say, go and watch it. Get that context for Moses. But today, we're gonna be introduced to Moses's brother. His name is Aaron. Now, Aaron, the first time we're introduced to him is when Moses is talking to God, saying, hey, please don't send me. Like, send anybody other than me, because I'm not the right guy. Again, the same thing we all do. We look at ourselves and go, I'm not good enough. Somebody else is better. Are you sure you're talking to me, God? Because that guy over there seems to have it all together. That girl right there, she could do a way better job. And so finally, God says, all right, you're still going, Moses, but I'm gonna give you a helper. So we're gonna read about that, all right? So we're gonna go into Exodus chapter four, verse 13 through 16 is where we're gonna start today. This is where we meet Aaron. It says, but Moses said, Lord,

please send someone else to do it. Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses, and he said, what about your brother, Aaron, the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and his heart will be glad when he sees you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth. I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if you were his mouth, and I'm sorry, as if he were your mouth, and as if you were God to him. Okay, so God says, all right, Moses, I get it, you're hesitating. Here's the good thing. I put some. pretty amazing characteristics in this guy named Aaron, who happens to be your older brother. I'm gonna use him. And so now Moses and Aaron, because they both have unique giftings, God sees it in both of them, he calls it out of them, and they go to make a difference in the world together. Now I don't have a lot of time to talk about marriage, but I do wanna put a thought in your head. Because the Bible says that when you were created, that you bear some of God's characteristics. The Bible also says that your spouse, when they were created,

they also bear those characteristics. And then the Bible says that when you are married, you become one flesh. Do you realize that God is taking the best of you and the best of your spouse, combining you together to be one living, walking example of gospel to the world? That there's intention. Marriage isn't about covering your loneliness. No, marriage is about providing you a suitable helper in your life to help you navigate this life and be effective in the world. And so God's combined you with somebody. Well, God combines Aaron and combines Moses. God says to Aaron, hey, Aaron, I see in you something that's special and I wanna use it. Have you ever had somebody call it out in you, something that they see in you that's special? For us, I think oftentimes, because we don't hear it from other people, we assume that we know what we're good at. So I've told this story before, but growing up, I assumed I knew my gift and it was singing. Just confident of it. In fourth grade at my church, grew up in a town of about 4,500 people, not a big town, but my church was decent size for a town that small. So in fourth grade, I was in the Christmas play at church. And when you're a fourth grader, you're basically the top of the food chain

when it comes to elementary and you get the really important roles in the play. And that year, in the story of Jesus, I had the most important role. They had made me a rock and roll sheep. Some lady in the church made a homemade sheep costume. I had sunglasses. They had traced out a guitar on cardboard, drew on it with a Sharpie, and I got to play that on stage. It was the last performance, right before we're getting ready for the weekend's performance, it's our dress rehearsal. And we are singing like crazy. And in my mind, the entire town is about to show up to see me as rock and roll sheep. In reality, the only people that showed up were your parents who had to be there, okay? But in my mind, 4,500 people were packing out this small church. And we get to this last dress rehearsal, and all of a sudden, Penny, who's the volunteer choir director, she says, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. One of you is singing off key. She's like, I'm gonna walk around and figure out who it is, but you guys just keep singing. Not a problem for me, I know my gift. I'm gonna sing. Well, we keep singing,

all of a sudden, she gets right in front of me, and she goes, stop, stop, stop. You, your voice is really bad, and you're too close to the microphone. I'm gonna need you to mouth the words. Fourth grade, for 80 people. I thought, she's wrong. So when that performance came that Sunday, I sang at the top of my lungs, letting everyone know just how good I was. It wasn't until seventh grade rolled around that my choir teacher came to me and was like, hey, I gotta tell you something. You're really bad at singing. Then I finally was like, oh, that's a general awareness. We often have people tell us what we're bad at, but do you ever have anybody tell you what you're good at? When I was in high school, I had the opposite happen to me. I had a youth leader, his name was Ned Wise. We had gone through three youth pastors in four years in my little church, mostly because me and my friends were kind of jerks. And I remember Ned came to me, and he said, hey, I want you to know, I see something in you. I wanna invite you to be part of a student leadership team because you have a gift of leadership. And I was like, really? He's like, yeah, you can lead these guys one way, or you can lead them the other.

And you have a gift of talking. You're really good at communicating. I want you to be on this team. I don't know what she does for you when somebody calls something out on you, but to have an adult outside of my parents who actually cared about me as a high school kid, who actually said something about me, it was like, wow, that changed my life. I guess I would ask you, has anybody ever had what we would call like a I see in you conversation with them like that? Has anybody ever had that where they looked at you, and they were like, here's what I see in you? And I'm guessing. blessing in a room this large across all of our campuses, that there's a lot of people that would say, actually, no. Nobody's ever intentionally sat with me and said, hey, I see something in you that's amazing. Why, because we live in a world that loves to criticize, tell us what we did wrong, give the negative review online, don't go on Yelp. But man, we're really slow to praise people, why? I don't get it. But here's what I would ask you to do, some homework for this week. If nobody has ever really intentionally told you what you are good at, here's what I'm gonna ask you to do. Find somebody you trust and love and say, hey, can I ask you a question?

What is it about me, what has God given me that you think makes me unique? What qualities do I have that I could be using and be effective? And you're like, I would never do that. That is the most embarrassing question that feels so selfish, it's like self-serving. Well, here's what I'm gonna tell you as a pastor. To not ask that question is super selfish and self-serving. Why? Because God was good enough to create you special, to make you unique, to put his characteristic inside of you. And to never use that gift and share it with the world, that's actually selfish. To hold it to yourself, to not recognize that God put intention and purpose in your life, that's actually selfish. So I would encourage you, no, get outside, stop it, don't feel embarrassed, go and ask somebody you trust and love, hey, would you help me identify some things in me that make me unique and special? And then do one more thing. Find someone else, find someone that you know and love and say, hey, today I wanna be really intentional and I want you to know that I see in you a gift. I see in you leadership and you need to be using it. Oh, I see in you empathy, like you can feel the world around you and know what people are experiencing.

Do you know that you have that? And you should be sharing that with other people, you should be proud of that. Oh, I feel in you generosity. I see that the way that you live your life is so open-handed, you know, most people don't do that, but I just encourage you to be even more generous with your life. Oh, I see in you a gift of working with kids. Oh, I see in you a gift of compassion. Whatever it might be, would you do that for someone? Because here's what you don't realize. The moment you do that for someone, it might ignite a fire in their life where they're like, I can do this. I believe that when God put it inside of us, he put it inside of us for a reason and for purpose. And so he says to Aaron, hey, you have a gift, you need to go use it. But then we're gonna come to the second instance of their life, okay? So now Moses and Aaron, they are working together, they're leading the Israelites. They're now in the desert and they're wandering. And as they're wandering, well, they come up against all sorts of people and enemies. Now, God has given Moses a staff. And this staff represents God's power and God's presence in the nation of Israel as they wander and walk through the desert.

It's not because of Moses and it's not because of Aaron that they were able to get out of Egypt and it's not because of Moses or Aaron that they are being led. No, it is God's power leading them everywhere they go and they approach some enemies. And I wanna read it to you. Again, we're gonna go to Exodus. So Exodus chapter 17, we're gonna read verses eight through 13 because there's another major step in Aaron's leadership. Exodus chapter 17, verse eight. It says, the Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, choose some of your men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands. So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered. And Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning. But whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone, they put it under him and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other so that his hands remained steady until sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekites

with the army, with the sword. Here we see Aaron serving now in a second tier role. You know, he's up there and we have Moses and every time his arms are up, they're winning. Every time they drop, they're losing. But Moses' arms grow tired and all of a sudden he needs help. And Aaron doesn't just go, hey, actually my gift is talking. So Moses. Oh, I'm just gonna tell you how to keep your arms in the air. That'd be what I should do. I'm gonna do what only I can do. No, he's like, oh my gosh, I can serve in this moment. There's a need and I will meet the need. You know, there's a lot of talk on leadership in our world today. And a lot of the talk on leadership is, hey, you need to identify what you only can do and you should do that. And you should. But then often that leads us to a mindset of leadership that's about power, that's about authority. It's about being special at something. And what we often lose is a leadership that Jesus modeled when he came to this earth. Jesus, he had all authority and all power. He had all the characteristics. Yet he willingly chooses to lower himself in an act of service to those around him.

He sees a need and he fills the need. And a question for you. Are you using your life to see a need and fill a need? Pastor CJ often says this around our staff. He will say this, hey, if Jesus is above us, then nothing he did is beneath us. It's like, I'm gonna try and figure out what is the need right here and how can I lower myself as an act of service? So another question for us to ask this week is just this. How can I be most effective in? So how can I be most effective in my church? Man, there were so many of you on Friday night across all of our campuses that showed up at Carmel for special needs prom. It was one of the greatest acts of just servant leadership I've seen our church do. But what if, what if everyone in our church took that posture every weekend? Of like, how can I make this body, because the body is made up of many people with many different gifts, how can I make this body most effective in the kingdom in this world? What if we said, how can I be most effective in my home? What if I approached walking in the door of my home, like, how do I serve my family? What if I said, how can I be most effective in my neighborhood? How can I be most effective in my community?

How can I be most effective wherever it might be, at work? What if I started asking the question, hmm, what are the needs around here and how can my life go ahead and fill that? Well, those are good things about Aaron. Aaron had gifts, he had talents, he was willing to be a servant leader, but then we're gonna get into the moment where he makes what I would call the greatest sin in all of the Old Testament. So the guy that we're praising right now is a guy that actually commits the greatest sin in all of the Old Testament. So if you wanna feel good about yourself, here's an opportunity, all right? Now, Moses, as he has led the people out of slavery, they are now a group of people with no home. There is no law, there is no morality. They are a group of people who are now completely free from anything, but that's not good. When there's no understanding of how we interact and lead as a community, problems arise. And so God, Moses goes to meet with God and God actually establishes government. He establishes morality, the law and the 10 commandments to help Moses know, hey, you need to tell this to the people because this is how they will live and interact with each other. So we come into Exodus chapter, let's see, I think I'm gonna go Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus chapter 20, we're gonna start in verses one through six, this is where God gives Moses the 10 commandments. We're only gonna read the first two commandments today, but I want you to hear them because it's gonna give us context into what Aaron does. Exodus chapter 20, verse one, and God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Commandment number one, you shall have no gods before me. Commandment number two, you shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, your God, am a jealous God punishing children for the sin of their fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands. He says, here's the first two commandments. No other gods before me, do not create any idols. And then as Moses tells us to the people in Exodus. Chapter 24, just want you to hear their response. Verse three, when Moses went and told the people all the Lord's words and laws, they responded with one voice. Everything the Lord has said, we will do. Everything the Lord said, we will do. And then like this, Moses, he goes back up the mountain to meet with God.

Why? Because God is continuing to share with him, here's how you're going to lead this nation. And as he's gone, the Bible tells us he was gone for 40 days. As he's gone, Aaron is left in charge. And all of a sudden, the people start to wonder, where's this Moses guy at? He's been gone for a long time. And so they come to Aaron, and now we're in Exodus chapter 32. This is the last long passage we'll read. Exodus chapter 32, verses one through eight, and then I'm going to skip ahead to 19 through 24. It says, when the people saw that Moses was long and coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what happened to him. So Aaron answered them, take off your gold earrings that your wives and your sons and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me. So all the people took off their earrings and they brought them to Aaron. He took what they had handed him and made it into an idol, cast into the shape of a calf, fastening it with a tool. Then they said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord. So the next day, the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterwards, they sat down to eat and drink and they got up to indulge in revelry. Then the Lord said to Moses, go down, because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt have become corrupt. They've been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and they've made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They've bowed down to it and sacrificed to it. And they've said, these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt. Verse 19, when Moses approached the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing and his anger burned. He threw down the tablets, the 10 commandments. He throws them out of his hands, breaking them into pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf that they had made and he burned it in the fire. Then he ground it into powder. He scattered it in the water and he made the Israelites drink it. That's quite a punishment, parenting punishment right there. You wanna sin? You're gonna drink this.

He said to Aaron, what did these people do to you that you led them into such great sin? Don't be angry, my Lord, Aaron answered. You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us about to Egypt, we don't know what's happened to him. So I told them, whoever has jewelry, take it off. They gave me the gold, I threw it in the fire and I don't know how it happened. Out came this calf. How often do we do what Aaron just did though? We know that we know that we know. The Bible says that the law is actually written on our hearts. We even have the Holy Spirit. Those of us who accepted Christ have the Holy Spirit in to guide us. We know what is right. Yet in a moment, we compromise and we jump into sin and we do something so similar. What was Aaron's response? Ah, first it was fear, right? It was fear. Well, Moses isn't here, I don't know what to do. I feel alone, like I don't wanna carry the weight of this myself and then, oh, you combine that fear with pressure, everybody wants me to do this. And the next thing you know, he just compromises, right? And he does it.

Do you do that? I do that. I get into a moment and I compromise. Now, I'm gonna talk to you about my worst parenting moment in the last couple of years. A moment that was super humbling for me and a moment of sin and thought, why not share it with a few thousand of my closest friends? Couple of years ago, my son got his first job, like real job. He works at Chick-fil-A. So of course, we had to work out the agreement. Hey, buddy, yes, you work, but no, you don't get to spend all this money any way you want to. So we have it set up that part of it goes away to savings right away, and then he's got his portion that he gets to spend. And part of that idea is to help him learn how to spend his money, and other parts of it is, I still have a hard time letting him spend all of his money that way. But a couple years ago, he really got into sneakers. And he wanted to buy cool sneakers. And so he would do these things called drops. So a drop is basically this, you get online and you enter a raffle. And when you win the raffle, what you win is the ability to buy the shoe at full price. And they're all more expensive shoes

than you buy in the store. And then when you buy it at full price though, oftentimes because they're such rare shoes, as soon as you buy them, they're worth two times or three times or four times what they cost. And so Corbin, he had bought this one pair of shoes that I was like, actually, that's a pretty cool pair of shoes and the cool thing is he was 16 and him and I are wearing the same size shoes. So I'm not spending that kind of money on those shoes, but I'm like, hey buddy, can I wear your shoes to work tomorrow? And he's like, dad, do not get anything on those shoes. And I'm like, buddy, I am a grown man. So I'm wearing these shoes and apparently they're worth like $400 because they got the swoosh on backwards. And I'm wearing them to church and we have this big staff meeting where we had an all day staff meeting. We were going over mission, vision, values with the staff and we had a lunch. And so we had coffee and drinks all day and then the whole lunch was all piled in these trash cans. At the end of the day, there were four giant trash cans overflowing and everybody was leaving. And I was like, I can't leave somebody else to take this trash out.

So I bottled up the trash and I carried it out to the dumpsters. What I didn't know was that in one of the left bags, there was a hole in the bottom. And as I walked, there was a string of coffee juice that just went back and forth across the left shoe. So I walked out, threw them all in the trash can. I'm walking back in and as I look down, I go, oh no, fear. Fear. These are my son's shoes. Pressure. But then I realize, oh, I've seen the commercials. When there is a giant oil spill and baby ducks need cleaned, you grab Dawn soap and you can get those things back to new. So I go into the kitchen of the church and I take off my left shoe and I throw it underwater and I grab that Dawn soap and I scrub that bad boy. And I get done and I'm like, that works. And I put it on my left foot. But here's what they don't tell you. When you're scrubbing a bright, beautiful baby duck with Dawn soap, it actually takes half the color out of the duck and he just becomes a less bright duck. Because when you put the left shoe next to the right shoe, now they didn't match. So what'd I do? I called my son and I was like, hey, I am so sorry. I made one, no, I didn't. I grabbed the right shoe off. And threw the Dawn soap on it and I scrubbed that bad boy.

And I got done and they matched. And I compromised and I was like, only somebody who knew what the shoe looked like before would even know. These look like they're supposed to look this way. So instead of telling Corbin, I just put it back in his closet. I thought, nobody will ever know. What a bad dad moment. How about compounding a mistake? Well, it takes a sneaker guy 15 seconds to walk into his room and all of a sudden go, dad? What's wrong with my shoes? Talk about a horrible, humbling moment to have to look at your 16-year-old son and be like, man, dad sinned. I'm sorry, buddy. And then super humbling when you have a 16-year-old who forgives you in that moment. To be like, wow, I felt like a really bad person right then. But he forgave me. And here's the thing. This is the crazy thing about God. The one who knows you the most, he loves you the best. He knows those inner desires, those feelings that you have, those thoughts that come into your life. He knows the sin that you've tried to hide in secret. Yet he chooses to love you the best.

You see, when we hide our sin, well, we hold on to it in shame. And often it defines who we are as a person. In fact, it holds us back. But when our sin comes into the light, well, it has a new opportunity. It has an opportunity not to define you anymore, but to become the defining moment of your life. And that's really the question is, does your sin define you? Or does that become a defining moment for you? Is there something that's holding you back today that you're holding on to, that maybe you need to bring it out into the light and expose it? Because God does something with that. God redeems that. You know, Moses, as soon as he's done making them drink their own powdered idol, he heads back up the mountain because he has to meet with God because he's continuing to learn, how do I lead and run this new nation? How do I help them get their envy? And God then gives them something new. God, when he's back on the mountain says, hey, we need to keep me in front of all these people in front of all these people. So I'm giving you the design for something called the tabernacle.

It'll be the tent at the center of camp. It's where my presence as God will live among the people. And this tent, well, it's gonna guide us where you need to go as you wander in the desert. And eventually that tent then becomes the temple where God's presence lives. And that tabernacle, well, that's where there's gonna be priests that serve there that will be mediators between an imperfect people and a holy God. And God says, there's a tribe that I want to run this tabernacle, to serve as priests and ministers. And they're gonna be the ones that transport it, move it and keep it clean. He says, Moses, you know the tribe I want to run that? I want the Levites to do it. You see, when we get to the promised land, everyone else is gonna have these lands that become theirs. The Levites will have no land to call their own, but I'm their God, and I'm gonna care for them. God redeems the curse. So now as people come and offer sacrifices to the Lord, well, part of those sacrifices goes to care for the Levite tribe. And then God says, in the middle of that tabernacle, there's gonna be a place called the Holy of Holies. It's where my presence is gonna live. And once a year, the high priest, he's gonna come into the tabernacle, and he's gonna come into the Holy of Holies.

He's gonna consecrate himself, and he is gonna offer the sacrifices for the sins of the nation. He's gonna act as the ultimate mediator between unholy people and a holy God. And Moses says, Aaron is gonna be the first high priest. Just moments after Aaron led the nation into the greatest sin that they could possibly commit, worshiping other gods and creating an idol, breaking the first and the second commandments, God says, that's my high priest. You see, we think our sin defines us, but God, would you say two words with me out loud together? Ready? But God. One more time. But God. You see, we think, we think we can't be qualified. We think we don't have what it takes. We think our sin defines us. But God, his story is that he redeems you, and he redeems me. That he put inside you something that he wants to use in this world. He's uniquely created you. Despite all the things you've ever done, now God was ready to redeem you. What you may think, man, I'm cursed. No, God says, I'm gonna bless it. I would just challenge you this week.

Walk out of here with some confidence. All of our campuses, those of us, those of you that are in the prisons, God, he sees you. He sees you. Your sin doesn't define you. But God, he redeems it. Would you stand with me so I can pray with you? Amen. Let's pray with me. God, thank you for your word. Your word, it clarifies things for me. It clarifies who you created me to be. God, I admit, I've fallen short of who you created me to be. I mess up, and I never, I never lived that sinless life. But thank you for sending Jesus, the one who was sinless, to take my debt, to take my sin, to take the penalty I deserve so that you could restore, put me in a right relationship with you. God, I pray for me, I pray for our congregation, those online, those under my voice right now. I pray that they would walk today in confidence, that you love them, that they are your masterpiece, that you are proud of them. God, that they would humble themselves and come to you, that you would make them effective and give them purpose in this world.

God, thank you for being a God who knows us, yet redeems us. We love you and ask that today you would put a fire in our heart to do something because of what you've done for us. We ask that in Jesus's name, amen. Northview, have an amazing week. We'll see you next week.