Church: A Place of Rest for Wandering Exiles

We've started a new series. It's a five part series on the theme of home or the theme of belonging throughout the Bible. The Bible is a book made up of 66 different books that spans across thousands of years written by over 40 authors. And even despite this great diversity, there are some amazingly consistent, repeated themes that are sort of drawn throughout these 66 different books. And one of them is this idea that humanity has been created to exist with God in a state or a place that is like finally reaching the home that you always hoped for.

That there is something in the human heart that seeks and desires a belonging, that even in your most well-to-do families, your most stable and pleasant societies or communities, something in us still cries for belonging. We hope for a home that we haven't yet experienced. And so last week, we looked at how there is a concept called sin which has disrupted God's original plan for belonging. Two weeks ago, we looked at how God created this place, a place of harmony between God, one another, and the world around us, the physical world around us. And through this thing called sin, fractures and tears in these relationships have taken place.

And now we'll see how God begins a plan of reversal, how to redeem and restore and recover that home that was lost. We're going to turn to Deuteronomy 30 this morning, but we will be doing a very big bird's eye fly through the Bible. So there will be plenty of scripture passages that I'll reference. I've put them on the board so we don't have to flip around too much in our Bibles. But we're going to cover about 3,000 years of history in ten minutes.

So we will begin this morning by reading our text, that which gives us sort of the main themes that we'll be talking about today. Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 15. Moses writes to Israel, the so called people of God, and he says to them, see, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules. Then you shall live and multiply.

And the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him.

For He is your life and the length of your days that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give it to them. So far our reading. Like I said, two weeks ago, we saw God placing and creating mankind, Adam and Eve as the first humans, and He creates them as divine image bearers of Himself. These two humans, our forefathers, are given and empowered with choice, with freedom, with the ability to know and choose life.

God places them in a garden that is a place of worship, a place of meeting and dwelling with God. But instead of living with God, choosing Him, they choose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in order to define for themselves what is right and wrong. And with this knowledge, they seek to overthrow the reign of God in their lives. But because of this choice, they suffer the consequences that God had also given them and they are exiled. They are removed from the garden, from the presence of God, from the temple garden, so to speak.

And the next generation on, and we looked at this last week, Cain and Abel come along. They're their children. And Cain is warned by God that sin is crouching now forever at the door of our hearts. And its desire, this crouching tiger is to devour us, to destroy us, to consume us. God warns Cain, but Cain does not heed the warning.

He kills his brother Abel in a fit of jealousy and he is banished from God's presence. He is forced even further than just outside the garden. The Bible says he moves further east from Eden. Metaphorically, as well as literally, the distance between God and Cain has grown so much bigger. But now hundreds of years pass.

Hundreds of years pass and there is an earth wide flood. There is a tower that is built called in a place called Babel. And humanity comes together again in a show of force to rival God, to create something that, in their minds at least, can intimidate God. All throughout this early history of humanity in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, we are shown that there exists two types of people, a people that lives for God and a people that rebels against God. And then surprisingly and unexpectedly, God appears in Genesis chapter 12 to a man called Abraham, a man who is a pagan worshipper at the very best, who does not know God, who does not love God.

And out of nowhere, God comes to this man and says to him, I promise to be your God and I promise to make you into a nation that will love Me. And that through this nation, I will give a blessing. I will give a blessing to everyone, to the whole world. How that looks is shrouded in mystery. God doesn't go into the details of how this nation from Abraham will be a blessing to the world.

But Abraham is promised a country of his own, a nation from his lineage, and a staggering relationship with a God he had seemingly never known. This surprising development, however, is not surprising if you've been following this story carefully. Abraham's call, God's promise to him is the starting point or is the hint at a reversal of the lost home from Genesis chapter three. This wandering, this restlessness that has taken place in the heart of mankind, Adam and Eve lost the garden. They lost their intimacy with one another.

There is friction between them. They have lost the presence of God, but here in Abraham is a promise, a reversal. From Abraham, hundreds of years pass again. Now the descendants of Abraham have indeed become a nation. They have multiplied.

They were fertile and they expanded like rabbits. But they find themselves as a nation, as slaves in Egypt. Through disobedience, through forgetfulness, Israel have forgotten the God of their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But once again, even in the forgetfulness of Israel, God is roused. The giant wakes up from his slumber, so to speak, at least in their perspective.

And once again, God is about to begin a work to undo the curse of humanity. He raises a man by the name of Moses who leads Israel out of Egypt. He is empowered by God, and he rescues Israel from slavery. But in eerily ironic and familiar circumstances, Israel, remember God's special people, find themselves in restless wandering in the wilderness for forty years through disobedience. They did not trust God.

They did not believe this God who had rescued them. They did not believe that He could do what He said He would do or that He really cared about them. And yet even through these forty years, God is reassuring them that He has a plan to reverse this great heartache, the lost home. God assures them with promises, promises spoken through the servant Moses and we'll look at them here. Firstly, God promises them a place, a new paradise, a new garden, so to speak, for Israel.

I will bring you to the place that I have prepared. What did God do for Adam and Eve? He planted a garden. Genesis two says now God will bring Israel to a place that I have prepared. I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, from the wilderness to the Euphrates, Exodus 23 verse twenty and thirty one.

In other words, God is going to give them a country, a space to be safe in. God gives them a second promise that they will be a people, a people that they can belong to. God says, none shall miscarry or be barren in your land. Little by little, I will drive your enemies out from before you until you have increased and possess the land. There is going to be a nation from you.

Even though you are small now, you will possess a land and you will be fertile in the land. And then finally, in order to show them that He is serious, God gives them a foretaste of His peace by promising His presence to them. Exodus 23:20, behold, I send an angel before you to guide you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. I am sending Myself. And so all that Israel have to do, all that they have to do is to trust that God will do this for them.

To love Him in response wholeheartedly, gratefully, through obedience, through love, through allegiance to Him. But as we read the Torah, as we read the five books, the first books of the Bible, we come to Deuteronomy, we read this morning, the last of the five. And this is Moses' final sermon, his last will and testament before Israel goes into the land. Moses will not be joining them. He's only been used to rescue them.

They will enter the land without him. But those reading through these final chapters, those of us who have done so, find ourselves a little bit unfulfilled. Because nearly all the tensions that have developed from the earliest chapters in Genesis throughout the first five books of the Bible, they remain unresolved. Abraham's family is indeed very big now, but they're still not in the promised land. And all the nations, through them, have not yet received their blessing.

To make it more complicated, the Israelites keep rebelling against God. They make it hard. After forty years of putting up with these grumbling road trippers, God gives Moses a final word, but it's a heartbreaking word. Deuteronomy 31, one of the last chapters in the book. Moses writes this: then the Lord appeared at the tent.

This is the tent of worship where God met with His people. The Lord appeared at the tent in a pillar of cloud in the presence of God and the cloud stood over the entrance to the tent. And the Lord said to Moses there, you are going to rest with your ancestors and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land that they are entering. They will forsake Me and break the covenant, break the promise I made with them. So the terrible consequences of their rebellion is the same as it was for Adam and Eve.

The same. The promise was the same. The consequences are the same. And this is beginning to show us that this dealing of Adam and Eve with God is all pervasive. It's dealing with humanity.

This is a whole nation now that are doing exactly the same. It is our rebellion we find out that is the loss of our peace. It is our rebellion that is the loss of our rest. God promised Israel a place, a people, and His presence, yet God achingly reveals to Moses, Israel will lose it. They will forsake God and they will lose it.

And so if the fulfilment of God's promises, if the fulfilment of God's deal with Israel depended on them, well then the Bible would be full of hopelessness because we see they keep making the same mistakes. But the Bible isn't filled with hopelessness. In the face of revealing the darkness of the human condition, not just a cultural group many thousands of years ago, the heart of humanity, God shows Himself to be committed to restoring a people who will love Him. A people who will love each other and a people who will become the vehicle of divine blessing to the nations. The laws, God's requirements are given to Israel to point out the way for them to love God, point out how to love others, but paradoxically, all they really point out is how broken they are, how broken these people are.

How far from these requirements they are. We discover that the consequences of breaking these promises, promises to love God through these things, that brings disaster upon them again. But in His grace and His relentless all pursuing love, God commits Himself again to restore a people. A people who will have a deep love for Him. A people who will be deeply committed to Him through how?

Through what ways? Through a transformation of the heart. All along, God is showing that the heart is the problem. The heart of the problem is the heart. This is what Moses writes in Deuteronomy 30, even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.

He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors even. The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts, however, and the hearts of your descendants so that you can love Him with all your heart and with all your soul and live. Israel's going to fail. The writing is on the wall just like the rest of humanity.

They have been given the physical sign of circumcision, the sign that they belong to God and not to the world, the Old Testament version of baptism. But it's never been about the physical sign. It is always meant to point to the inward reality that God wants a heart that has been cut free from its limitations. A cutting away of what is harmful. God will transform the heart so that people will become what God wanted them to be.

And again, hundreds of years pass. And what God promises Moses does happen. There is a rebellion, in fact, many rebellions. There are good years and there are bad years, but ultimately, Israel failed to live up to the mark. The prophecies are fulfilled.

Israel is taken into exile by their enemies. But like a fainting person given some smelling salts, the Old Testament prophets during the exile once again raised the themes that have been brought out by Moses. Have a look at this. This is, like I said, hundreds of years later. Indeed, a thousand years later.

The prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 36 says this: I will give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit in you. I will remove from your heart the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Jeremiah 24 verse seven. The prophet Jeremiah says, I will give them a heart to know Me that I am the Lord.

They will be My people and I will be their God for they will return to Me with all their heart. Different books, different eras, the same message. It's about the heart. It's with this anticipation that we then finally reach the New Testament. Again, another hundred, seven hundred years later.

And we meet Jesus. And again, there's a consistency because He sums up all of God's laws, all of God's desires for His people in two statements, in two great grand laws. He says, firstly, to love God is to love Him with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. Everything about you. And then the second commandment flows from this, to love your neighbour as yourself.

Where does love come from? The heart. All of God's laws, all to do with His holiness, His desire for justice and mercy and kindness and obedience and humility, where does that all lie? It lies in the heart. That is the motive.

That is the engine for our existence. Jesus says things and He teaches things like, it is not what you eat that will make you unclean. It is what comes out of your heart that proves that you are unclean. He says it is from the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks. Every bit of lies, every gossip, every slander, every hurtful word we say is indicative of a heart that is not healed yet.

But more than teaching and confirming what God has been revealing through scripture all along, this Jesus talks about allegiance to Him in very clear and certain terms. He says things like, come to Me all you who are weary and those who feel burdened by this weight of restlessness, of sin, of brokenness. Come to Me all of you who are weary and I will give you rest. Rest, home, peace. There's that word again, isn't it?

Shalom. I will give you Shalom. Jesus, in another instance, talks about a wayward son, the prodigal son, who loses his home, who seeks to make it out on his own, who rebels against his father and realises that all he's ever wanted was actually to be with his dad. Jesus says things like, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. But no one can come to the Father except through Me.

No one can come to God except through Jesus. But then Jesus dies on a cross. And then there are accounts of him being raised again to life three days later, and then He disappears after forty days. Why? Because it's through that death that Jesus pays the penalty of the heart's disobedience.

And it's through His resurrection that He gives life and cleansing to that very heart. And we'll hear about that in more detail next week where we look at how Jesus becomes the exile of the exiles. He becomes the greatest exile from God on our behalf. But suffice it to say, through Jesus, God's plans to restore humanity has started taking place. This is why the apostles, and I've told you, I've covered the whole Bible today, but this is why the apostles in the New Testament start writing to the early Christians everywhere of the wonderful news, the greatest encouragement that you will ever have, the marvellous implications of what Jesus has achieved.

And that's where I want to begin to land the plane this morning, to see that God has fulfilled His plan through Jesus. Let's have a look at one Peter, which is in the New Testament. One Peter chapter two. And like I said, this is where we land the plane this morning. I'm going to read from verse four.

One Peter chapter two verse four. The apostle Peter writes to a bunch of Christians, early Christians, and he says to them, as you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious. You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Skip down to verse nine. He says again, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Peter, the disciple of Jesus, is writing to people who have just started putting their trust and their allegiance with Jesus.

And he's writing to them to explain just how marvellous it is to believe in the work of Jesus on their behalf because he's saying Jesus is the answer to humanity's deepest problem. And our deepest problem is restless wandering. In just a few verses, Peter shows how this was accomplished and it's magnificent how he does this. And it sums up those three promises that God made in the Old Testament. Firstly, we see a place.

Remember God promised Israel a place to belong? They were offered a promised land that will give them security. Well, Peter says, God has making you all has started making you all collectively a place to belong. What is Peter talking about here? He's talking about the church.

He's talking about the church. In verse four, Peter says, as you receive Christ, the prophesied rejected stone that the builders of Israel rejected, the kings of Israel, the intellectual elite, the religious elite even, saw him and didn't want him. But as you come to this stone who the builders rejected, ironically, you, like living, breathing stones, are being formed into a spiritual house, he says. What happens in a house? You live there.

It is home. Like living stones, you are being mortared together to become a spiritual house. You Christians are being built into a home. And while these kings and these queens were looking at physical things to somehow build and restore a place of rest for Israel. Somehow, a way to reclaim the promised land.

God instead has been forming you collectively into this place, into this house, a place of rest for all. We see this amazingly in the first fruits of this blessing to Abraham as well in verse 12. Keep your conduct therefore among the Gentiles, meaning the non-believers, honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and what? Glorify God on the day of visitation. This is the blessing of the nations starting to take shape through you.

Non-believers, people that weren't part or haven't been part of this will start to realise who God is. So that one day when He comes, they will glorify Him. Why? Because they are a part of us. They are in the church.

They are in this spiritual house. The blessing to the nations has started taking place. The second promise is also fulfilled in Jesus. Verse nine, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of His own possession. The promise of being a people has started taking shape.

Verse 10, once you were not a people. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Do you see that? God Himself is forming for Himself a true Israel.

A true people. And Peter is writing to people from all different cultures. There are Greeks in this church. There are Jews in this church. There are Africans in this church.

And he says, you don't belong anywhere except with God. Even individually, you don't fit in anywhere because your restless hearts are still seeking home. And we all know this. Once you were not a people. Once you didn't fit in anywhere, but you are now God's people.

You are a chosen group. You are a holy nation. The church of Jesus Christ has become the people that God has always wanted. Does that mess with your understanding of church? Do you think of the church, your church in that sort of way?

It's a magnificent thought. The church of Jesus Christ has become the people that God has always wanted. And then lastly, the presence. The promise of the presence is fulfilled in Jesus. Like Israel in the Old Testament who were given God's presence, firstly, at that tent of meeting, the pillar of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night, God's angel that leads them, God's presence that leads them, eventually at the temple in Jerusalem in the promised land.

Yet because of the rebellion as He had promised, the temple is destroyed. God's physical presence leaves the place. Peter is saying God's presence has come to rest with His people again, His church. And Peter says, you have become a people who are now like priests serving in the temple. When Peter uses that term spiritual house, it's a play on words.

It can mean a house which is spiritual unlike a physical house, but it can also mean the place, the house where spiritual matters take place. The temple. You have become the temple of God. Paul the apostle makes a far clearer statement about that. Peter says, you have become a people who are like priests serving in the temple.

So what happens in the temple? Well, God dwells there. Right? God dwells in a temple and people worship there. And so as a church, you are priests and you offer worship to God.

That's why Peter says, proclaiming the excellencies, proclaiming the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. God's presence through the Holy Spirit is now resting on His people, the church. And so when we come to this building, we don't come and meet God here. We meet God because the people are here. You bring God with you when we meet together in this place.

And so we find this wonderful thing has happened. All of God's desires for His people have been fulfilled through Jesus, through His death, His resurrection, His ministry, His life. And God has started establishing a place of rest on earth. And it might surprise you, but it's called the church. And you may not think of it in that way, but it is true.

God has begun to establish a people, a place, and His presence. And yet as I say this, and as you are hearing this, we are also so aware of the imperfections. This thing called the church can be so fragile because people get upset with one another. People hurt one another. And members fail one another.

And leaders fail. And people leave. Why? Because the earthly church is still only a foretaste of heaven. There is a time coming when everything will be made whole.

It means that the greatest joys we experience in the church is still just a shadow, just a sample of something far greater that will exist for all eternity. And the greatest disappointments are still just waiting to be swallowed up in glory. That is why Peter concludes with these words. Verse 11, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles. The NIV says residents, aliens, strangers and aliens.

Beloved, I urge you to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. Why would Peter say this after he said that the Christians have become the place and the people of God? Why does Peter say this? Because he says we are still on our way home. We haven't quite arrived.

We're still just passing through. In Genesis four, God tells Cain, beware of sin. It crouches at the door. It wants to devour you. In one Peter two, God says, sin is waging a war against your soul.

But now because of Christ, because of Christ, it only wages a war against your soul. It means it's like this image of a protected city, a fortified city, and there are people surrounding it trying to attack it. And there will be skirmishes lost. There will be battles that are lost here and there, but the city will be safe. The victory is secure.

The city of our hearts is safe because it has been fortified by grace. It has been kept secure by power and forgiveness. So how do we live in response to that? Well, we love the church. We pray for her protection.

We serve all those who come to her for shelter and rest. If you see a church simply as a place to hear a sermon, you've missed the point. You've missed a massive point. It's a place of rest. It's a place of belonging, place to find your kind of people.

Once you were not a people. Now you are the people of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the calling of lost, restless, wanderers back home.

Lord, I want to pray for those who may be sitting in this place who have never made a personal decision to return home. Who have perhaps never even felt that need. But maybe today or maybe recently they have started missing something that they have never known. Or for those friends, I want to pray that they may give their hearts over to you because it is an issue of the heart. That they may pledge their allegiance and they put their trust in you, that they will humbly come before you to seek your forgiveness and the power and the grace, the mercy and the kindness that you long to give them.

And, Lord, for the rest of us, as we live out our lives in this church, in the church, help us to see just how precious, just how wonderful, just how moving it is what you have done with this ragtag bunch of people. We pray, Lord, that we will not discredit your church because it is the church that you have died for. It is the church that you have loved with an endless love. And Lord for those who are dealing with lots of pain that have been received within the church, that have been experienced within that church because of its imperfection. Lord, I pray for grace and healing.

I pray for a knowledge of your peace. I pray, Lord, a blessing on their lives. Thank you, Lord, that we may be strengthened by this wonderful teaching. Thank you, Lord, that we may belong to a place, a people, and a group with your presence. And we look forward with anticipation when we will be with one another in perfection forever. Amen.