February 10-14
[M] Exodus 32-34; Philippians 3
[T] Exodus 35-37; Psalm 26; Phil 4
[W] Exodus 38-40; Hebrews 1
[T] Leviticus 1-3; Psalm 27; Heb 2
[F] Lev 4-7; Heb 3
Dwell Plan Day 31-35 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
Exodus 32:24 | This might be one of the lamest excuses for sin written in the Bible. You see the same pattern from Adam and Eve–blame someone else! He doesn’t take real responsibility for what happened, and we’re going to see how this works out later: Aaron’s divided faith winds up destroying his family. But, in this moment, here he’s almost comical, until you realize that you’ve done the same sorts of things and played the same sorts of blame games. But what’s so astonishing is how this is a direct contradiction of everything they’ve heard and seen. It’s like the last 31 chapters didn’t even happen or didn’t make a dent in their thinking. Notice though: this is always the story. The disciples act the same way–blundering and misunderstanding the kingdom of God all the time. We should take great courage in this. As God’s people we consistently mess it all up. And as the God of grace, He consistently forgives, repairs, and provides.
Exodus 32:7-14 | Moses intercedes for the people of God again and again. His prayer argument against God’s judgments makes Moses a preview of Jesus and His intercession. What do we learn? Argue for God’s glory, argue for His protection against a bad reputation, argue from His promises. Argue with Him on His terms and His character. Why else is this story here, but to also teach us how to wrestle with the Almighty? Our Savior is doing this actual work at this very moment. Let’s join Him at the throne.
Exodus 33:11 | True relationship with God is real, personal, and possible. In these ancient stories it’s rarer, but in the coming of Christ and His kingdom, Jesus calls His disciples friends. Moses is a picture of what’s possible for even the littlest faith, because we have the fullness of the Spirit now. Praise Him!
Exodus 33:18 | “Please show me Your glory,” asks Moses. He meets with God as a friend, he performs miracles in God’s Name, he just spent 40 days and nights on the mountain with God, and what does Moses ask for? Gimme more. Even Moses’s request points to Jesus, because only Jesus could be the true answer to such a cry to God. What a rebuke to our self indulgent hearts–that we can indulge ourselves endlessly in Him. Let’s seek that together in Jesus and ask for it daily. Give us more.
Exodus 33:19 | “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (NIV) Remember this verse when we get to Romans 9.
Exodus 34:14 | We think of jealousy as a negative trait, and most folks are probably weirded out when this word is applied to God. But think about what it would mean to lose this attribute of God: What would it look like if God wasn’t jealous over his people? What would it mean if God didn’t care when people sought after idols? It would mean he didn’t love. Real love, of course, goes hand in hand with jealousy. When God says that he is jealous, what he’s really telling us is that he loves us so much that he can’t stand our chasing after lesser gods.
Exodus 34:29 | Moses is shining! When Jesus meets with Moses and Elijah on what we call the “Mount of Transfiguration,” he’s super shiny too. The language of Mark is that He was a brighter and purer light, cleaner than the best detergents could create. Christ is the second Moses! Again and again Moses has these little things in his life that point to Jesus. This is exciting because of the way it ties the whole story of the Bible together, making it one story about God’s love for sinners.
But there’s more excitement here to look for! If Moses can shine like Jesus with God’s Presence on him, what’s possible now? Or rather, what’s impossible for us? You don’t think whole mountains could jump into the sea, do you? Actually, if I stop a moment to remember His glory and power, I realize Twin Peaks and the other 47 hills in this city don’t have a chance. Not if we are a people seeking His face, reflecting His glory, and shining in the great darkness of this generation. Praise Him.
Tuesday
Exodus 35:21 | This is one of the early “offering basket” moments in God’s kingdom. It’s a fundraising program for building God’s house, something we’re all familiar with to this very day. But notice what it says, everyone gave “whose heart stirred him.” There’s something freeing about God’s kingdom–free of manipulation and coercion. God has a love and joy in the giver who gives out of the overflow of their hearts, out of gratitude and thankfulness, out of freedom and worship. Compulsion, guilt trips, and demands are not the way of our Father’s kingdom. These details in God’s ancient laws are little previews of Jesus and the whole New Testament, revealing the inner beauty of what our God builds by faith. He always has.
Exodus 35:31-35 | This little note is so encouraging. What is the work of the Spirit? He actually has two works in us. God gives us the Holy Spirit so we can do holy and good stuff. Quite practically, it is “skill, intelligence, knowledge, and craftsmanship” for Bezalel and Oholiab. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of action!
But notice how important the second part of His work is: they also get filled with the Spirit to reproduce and multiply their work through teaching! That’s also a work of the Spirit, and reveals how we should always seek the Spirit’s fulness.
The Spirit’s fulness isn’t really a spectacular worship event with tons of good feelings. It may have all that or not, but one part of His work at all times is to reproduce and multiply dependence on Him. Let’s all seek the fullest work of the Spirit in this age and this generation: to make Jesus–and His salvation–beautiful to all people.
Psalm 26 | Some of David’s poems can be difficult to own for ourselves. At times we can’t relate, and some of that is cultural. These are poems that come from a different time and culture, and we can feel the disconnect.
But in this poem, it can feel even worse. David is writing a poem about how good he really is! That certainly doesn’t seem to sound right. Where’s his humility? Where’s his awareness of sin? But here’s where we can grow in spiritual maturity: You can’t take just one slice of David’s poetry and have the whole picture of who he is. He’s a complex and multi-dimensional person, a lot like you and me. His faith (and writing) at times does express his sins, failures, doubts, and complaints as well as his joys, wonder, and thankfulness at the goodness of God. David is a picture of a whole life lived for God, not just part.
In verse three, David tells us his real presuppositions. What he assumes is that he is walking in God’s faithfulness, not his own! So as David lists his good deeds, he’s just giving glory to God. And so the Spirit is teaching us too–revealing to us how to see our good works as works of God. And if they are works of God, they should be celebrated and praised and listed. You and I must do this too at times, especially when we feel so accused in our hearts about our sins and failures. It isn’t really David’s righteousness that he’s talking about, and he knows it. It is God’s steadfast love, right in front of his eyes.
Philippians 4:4-9 | Memorize this. Ingest it deeply. Let your soul soak in it again and again. Bring it up to God, and ask for the promise it makes to be true. Channel your mind with this instruction on what to think about. Think of your heart, and of your worries and anxieties as things that harden your heart. They make it tough and resistant to God’s love and grace. This is the natural drift of who we are in this world.
But take this lesson from the cheapest cuts of meat off the cow: if you marinate even the most leathery top round, it becomes tender and juicy. Marinating your toughened heart in a text like this, by memorization and meditation on its truth, will soften and tenderize your heart and mind.
Philippians 4:13 | “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
This is one of the most misapplied verses in the Bible. This is not a call to strength and power, “I can do whatever I want ‘cause Jesus is on my team.” Look at the context: Paul is talking about suffering for Jesus, and then he says, “I can even suffer for him because he gives me strength.” So, when put in context, this is not a call to strength, but perseverance though suffering for the name of Christ Jesus.
Wednesday
Exodus 38-40 | Blueprints are hard to describe with just words. It isn’t easy to picture all of this stuff they’re making in your mind, so search the internet for “Old Testament Tabernacle” under images. You’ll get to see a whole bunch of guesses about what this big tent actually looked like.
And notice: God’s people are living in tents, therefore God lives in a tent. When God’s people live in houses, then God also lives in a house–called the temple. God is making a point here about His intentions, isn’t He? We all live in bodies of flesh in order to be human, so guess what God’s going to do: He too will live with us in a physical body. And that’s just the part before it gets even better. In a turnabout that exalts His kingdom, we get new bodies in His glory that are even better, so He can fellowship with us forever. Wow. And it all began with camping. Who would have thought?
Hebrews | Today, we start the book of Hebrews. Tomorrow, we’ll start Leviticus. I want you to think about why the folks who put this plan together did that. The book of Leviticus isn’t a random set of weird sacrifice laws that are completely disconnected from New Testament theology. The law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ and that connection is made most clearly in the New Testament when we read the book of Hebrews.
Thursday
Leviticus | As we jump into Leviticus, please take a look at the Bible project video first. I promise it’s gonna help you see what’s going on here and how it all points us to Christ. Also, as you read this whole section on sacrifices and offerings (Chapters 1-7), ask yourself, “What was the point of this ritual? For sin? Peace? Thanksgiving?”
Leviticus 1-7 | This book is joked about as boring, and it can feel a bit inaccessible. We don’t slaughter animals for offerings in our culture. It’s viewed as distasteful even to slaughter animals publicly. Most of it happens behind closed doors. It offends our sensibilities.
But in Romans 12, we were told to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices.” (NIV) How can you know what that means, unless you learn about what sacrifices are? They show us that God is most holy. They reveal that nothing about us is holy. They reveal how necessary blood is for our rescue from guilt. They show how worship reflects the breadth of our Christian experience, as the sacrificial offerings represent guilt and thanksgiving, sin and peace. Ask the Spirit to show you how to offer up sacrifices of prayer and praise in all of these ways.
In its dry way, this book is slowly revealing just how huge the scope of God’s saving grace really is. Just how far it reaches. What kind of God is this? This book has a secret depth we can begin to see: The cross of Jesus represents all of the offerings combined, and the Spirit creates a “levitical” dimension to our daily worship and walk in repentance and faith.
Leviticus 5:15 | You are responsible before God, for all of the sins you did unintentionally and unknowingly. Think about that the next time you confess your sins to God. There’s an old expression that captures this. “There’s no ‘little sin’ in this world, because there’s no ‘little God’ to sin against.” He is a great and awesome and pure God, and we need a whole lot more forgiving than we’re even aware of. Christ had to die for all of that too. What a savior! Leviticus leads us to treasure Jesus.
Psalm 27 | A poem for you when you’re scared! A part of being really frightened is getting overwhelmed. Problems and fears loom in your consciousness with a size you can’t manage.
David cuts through this with a beautiful simplicity. He seeks only one thing: to know God, which he describes in three different ways.
This clarity is a lot like the clarity Christ calls us to when He says to seek first the kingdom of God. When Christ teaches this, He goes on to say that everything else will then be added to you.
Notice how consistent the message of God’s love is across Scripture. List how many requests to God come out of this poem in verses 7-12! Gospel simplicity is the foundation for living in life’s complexity.
Hebrews 2:17 | Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
This is one of those verses that you could memorize, think about every day for years, and still not hit the bottom of its depths. Take a minute later today or tomorrow and just read it a few times. Look at all that this verse says about who Christ is and why he became one of us.
Friday
Leviticus 4 | Here is a great note from the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible: “The promise of forgiveness is fulfilled in Christ’s giving himself as a sacrifice for sin (Rom. 8:3; Heb. 10:1–10).”
Hebrews 3:7-8 | This ancient warning is always in front of us, always a danger, always a call to awaken. There is an urgency about the good news that’s always been a part of it. This life is a window of grace, an open opportunity to know the living God. And in our lives there are particular windows of grace that open up, where God seems more real, and we have a greater desire to follow. Perhaps there’s a church or community that’s inviting you, that’s proving how true it all is. Or it’s a preacher that you connect with, who makes you want to believe. Or it’s an amazing answer to prayer that you just can’t explain other than Jesus.
Hear God say to you through all of these things: If you hear Me speaking–hear it in your heart and see it all around you–don’t resist it, and don’t be proud.
It’s so vital–and such a risk–that the writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95 three different times in this chapter and the next: Don’t harden your attitude or thoughts or heart about it. And hear the writer’s urgency about your “today,” because now that we know Christ, the stakes are eternal all around us. And we don’t know when our allotment of “todays” ends.