New Commands and a New Covenant - Chapter 5 Recap

A little humor?  A little girl had been naughty and was sentenced to time in the corner.  As she endured her time-out, her mom called to her, "Sally, are you still sitting down?"  Sally called out, "I may be sitting down on the outside - but I'm standing up on the inside!"

During our journey through "The Story," instead of getting lost in the details of the lower story, we're rising up to the 30,000 foot level and connecting the pieces of the upper story in order to see what God is up to.  Chapter 5 will surprise you when you see what it is going to do for us in God's grand plan to get us back.

In Chapter 5, God wants to come down and dwell with Israel.  This is the big idea, the big vision of the whole story of God.  The trinity of God wants to extend their community to include people.  God wants to come down and do life with us.  That was the original vision of Genesis 1, and this is what God is desperately wanting to do, in page after page in scripture, chapter after chapter of The Story, God wants to get us back.

In Chapter 1, sin changed everything; it ruined God's vision and seperated us from God, and really, from each other.  In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, God interacted with people, but in Chapter 5 God is determined to come back down and dwell with the people.  But in order for this to happen, three things have to take place:

1.  The people must follow the guidelines on how to treat each other and God (10 Commandments)
2.  God needs a place to stay (the Tabernacle)
3.  Sin must be atoned for (through sacrifices)

What's the application for us today?

1.  We must atone for our sins...  Jesus' blood has already been sacrificed for us.
2.  Instead of a tabernacle, we get to be the place that God can dwell.
3.  In order for God to come into our lives, there have to be guidelines on how we treat each other.  But trying to obey the 10 Commandments without first accepting Jesus' sacrifice, and God's place in our hearts, is no better than the little girl that was "sitting down on the outside and standing up on the inside."  In order to outwardly conform to God's laws - we need to be inwardly transformed by God's presence in us!