Could you have heaven with no sickness, every friend you ever loved, every pleasure you ever tasted—and still be satisfied if God were not there? At Sinai in Exodus 19, Israel, just out of slavery, receives the law and a portable tent meant to keep God at the center of camp. The question that will follow them through the wilderness is the one that follows everyone: the garden, or its God?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor asks, “Do you want God, or do you just want His garden?” What is the difference between desiring God’s presence and desiring God’s blessings? Can you think of areas in your life where you might be seeking one without the other?
Could you be satisfied with a perfect heaven if Jesus were not there? What does your honest answer reveal about whether you want God or merely His gifts?
The sermon distinguishes between moral laws, national laws, and religious laws. How should this framework change the way modern Christians approach the Old Testament? Which category do you find most challenging to understand or apply today?
The tabernacle placed God’s dwelling at the center of camp and moved with the people through the wilderness—a sign that God is a “with-you God,” not a distant one. How does that image change the way you think about your own wilderness seasons?
Participation in God’s plan is voluntary, but the pattern is not. Where in your life do you currently want God’s presence and blessing while still insisting on setting the terms yourself?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
The sea behind us, the desert before us, we still needed His help, now more than ever. The pillars of mist, the fire we followed; He spoke at the mountain, gave us His law, showed us the way forward, but we chose to ignore it. A cycle of forgetting, generation after generation, chasing idols. The prophets warned us, but injustice kept rising. Kings failed, people rebelled, temple destroyed, a nation in ashes. We abandoned His law. Had He abandoned us?
Before we jump into season two of this series that we’re in, I want to just take a moment of reflection and give you a question to think about, just for a few moments in silence. So, right where you’re sitting, maybe with your eyes closed real quick, I want to ask a question, and I want you to search your heart and search your mind for an answer. Here’s the question: What do you want most in life? Right now, as you sit here, what do you want most in life? My assumption is it’s something good. Something good.
A question that was posed by an author and pastor still just messes with my heart today, and I want to read that question that he poses to you. It’s this question. He says, the critical question for our generation and for every generation is this: If you could have heaven with no sickness and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you have ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, if you could have all the physical pleasures you ever tasted and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven if Jesus were not there? It’s a revealing question to ask. Could I have my heart’s deepest longing? Could I have heaven? Would I be satisfied with those things were God not there? I think maybe it can be posed this way: Do I want God or do I just want His heaven? I don’t want to answer that question. And I don’t want that question posed to me. So thank you for allowing me to pose it to you. Do I want God or do I just want His heaven? That’s the question that is going to be lingering over all the stories that come forth in season two of From Eden to Eternity.
Season two, we’re going from Exodus to exile. It’s a people who have just been freed from Egypt, a land that, while it was flowing with milk and honey, was also a land oppressing them with slavery. They’ve just been freed from it. Last week we talked about how Moses was raised up as the leader of the Israelites. He goes to Pharaoh. He demands that they be released. God shows up in all of His power and rescues the people of Israel, moves them out of Egypt, across the Red Sea. Now there are millions of them outside of Egypt just looking forward to what’s ahead. They’ve been introduced to this God who cares about them and has the power to free them. Now, what are we going to do about that?
The question that’s going to be facing the Israelites though is, do we want God or do we want what He promises? Do we want God or do we just want what God can do for us? They’re freed from slavery, but what we’re going to see is that Egypt was not the biggest obstacle for the Israelites. It was their own hearts. This was the deepest problem. Because you can be free from Egypt, but you still have your heart. And so the question has to be, what’s the thing that my heart longs for? What’s the thing that my heart longs for?
So God’s question in season two is going to be this. Do you want God or do you just want His garden? You’ve been evicted from the garden. You no longer have access to the tree of life and all the bounty and all the flourishing that the garden provided. What do you miss about the garden? Is it the fruit that you miss? Is it the leisure you miss? Is it the purpose you miss? Is it the lack of curse that you miss? Or do you miss the God that dwelled in the garden as well?
These newly freed Israelites, if you’ll open up your Bibles to Exodus chapter 19, that’s where we’re going to be today, Exodus chapter 19. If you have the guidebook, you can open up to pages 23-24. That’s where you can take notes. These newly freed Israelites, at this moment, find themselves under the leadership of Moses now. Moses has just gone through one of the most miraculous things that anybody has ever seen in the parting of the Red Sea. So they are willing to follow this guy. When we come to Exodus chapter 19, we see Moses leaves this newly freed people at the base of a mountain called Mount Sinai and traverses the mountain to go to the top to meet with God, to be in the presence of God. The people below, they are the new Israelites. They are freed from slavery. They are now under Moses’ leadership. Soon they will be on their way to the promised land because, after all, God promised them that they would become a people. They look around, and there are a lot of people now. But God also promised them a land. They look around. They just left Pharaoh’s land, and they’re not yet in the land. So they know they’re on their way to a promised land.
Now on top of this mountain, God is going to tell Moses how they will have access to Him, how they can have access to God, and how they can regain access to the garden. Now, just a reminder of the two promises that God had made up to this point to Abraham. He promised the people that He was going to give Abraham a lineage. If you remember back a few episodes ago, Abraham was an old man with no kids. God came to him and said, one day, your descendants will be too many to count. As the Israelites stand there at the bottom of Mount Sinai, there are too many to count. God has come through on this promise. This is a big part of the plan that God is rolling out through the Old Testament: to build a people, to build a family of God. He also promised Abraham a land. He said, “Leave your land, Abraham, and I will give you a land that I will show you.” God showed him that land, but then immediately that land was in famine, so they left that land and went to Egypt. Four hundred years later, they’re slaves in Egypt. Now they are free, and they’re going to try to make their way back to that land that God showed Abraham. Land and lineage: these are two pillars of the promise that God made to the Jewish people.
But here in Exodus 19, He introduces them to the other two pillars of His promise: law and dwelling. Law and dwelling. This is what I want to focus on today. He says, “I want a people who reflect me. I want a place for those people to flourish and delight in. But I also want to show you how these people can reflect Me.” So He lays out the law. This is what it means to live in light of who I am. And I don’t just want a people in a land. I want to be in that land with you. So God introduces to them how He plans to dwell in the land with them.
Exodus chapter 19. What we’re going to see is that God is not just preparing a land for a people. God is preparing a people for His presence. He’s not just interested in taking them to the Garden of Eden. He’s interested in being with them as their God. So, in this new season of the story, the question we’ve got to ask is this: How will Israel, this newly found nation, reflect the image of a holy God? And the answer is the law.
Now, mind you, the Israelites have just left a nation, and in that nation, they’ve learned a few things. They’ve learned Egypt’s law. They’ve lived under them for centuries. They’ve learned Egypt’s religious practices and the way that they worshipped their many gods. The Hebrews have learned the morals of the Egyptian people. What they’re unfamiliar with is God as their king. How would God reign over them? So God invites Moses up to this mountain. He says, “I want to pass along to you the law that you will pass along to the Israelites.”
Starting with verse 3 of chapter 19, this is how it unfolds: It says, “Moses went up to God on the mountain, and the Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, ‘Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel, You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples. For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’”
God starts the giving of the law by reminding Moses of where they came from, essentially saying, “Hey, you remember what I just did? Remember what I did back there in the Red Sea? How I delivered you guys from Egypt?” And Moses is like, “Of course I did, it was just a few weeks ago. I was there; I was part of it.” And God’s like, “Make sure you remind the people of that, because they need to know that I’m a good God. I’m going to give you some laws and rules and regulations, but I want it to be founded on who I am and what I do. I want you to know that I am a good God who will deliver you from sin and slavery.”
And He says, “Now that we’ve got that settled, here’s what I want you to tell them: Obey my voice, and keep my covenant. I want to make you into this great nation, but in order to do that, you need to do two things. You need to obey my voice, and keep my covenant. And if you do that, then you will become this people that I have promised. You will have this land that I have promised. If you keep these laws and regulations that I’m going to pass on, you will show me that your heart longs for me, not just the garden.”
After that, after verse 6, and for many verses and many chapters following, God begins to give Moses the law. You’ve heard of the Ten Commandments, but beyond the ten, there are 600 plus more laws that God passes along. And essentially, as we read through these laws, we get lost. This is where many people’s Bible reading plan fails. You get to this part of it, and you’re like, “Yes, the Mount Sinai, it’s going to be great. The law, like God’s handwriting on the tablets.” And then you read law after law after law. So confusing. What does this have to do with me? What does this have to do with my life today? And we shut it and stop reading it.
But there’s something we need to know about these laws. As dry as they are, as hard as it is to read this section of Scripture—and it’s hard, by the way, because the narrative stops and the instruction begins. The narrative is put on pause, and instruction begins. So it feels like we’re sitting in class. What we need to do while we sit in this class is ask, “What is God trying to teach me? What was God trying to teach them? What is God trying to teach me in the process?”
Essentially, what we see when we read the law that’s passed down from God to Moses is that there’s really three broad categories of law. I hope this will help you as you read through the Old Testament: three broad categories of law. There are moral laws, there are national laws, and there are religious laws that God passes along. Moral laws, religious laws, and national laws. Typically, a law will fit in one of these categories. There are a lot of laws, though, that blur the lines, so these are broad categories.
Essentially, what God is doing is saying, if we are going to be together, if you’re going to be my people, you need to live and reflect my heart and character. This is a lot of the moral laws that we read: that you shall worship one God; that’s a moral guideline that He set; that you don’t murder, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery. This is moral. Stay away from immorality. Moral laws.
But then there are also national laws. Mind you, what God is doing is He’s not just freeing a people; He’s turning these people into a nation. They no longer live in Egypt. They’re used to the Egyptian national laws. Here they are, alone at the bottom of Mount Sinai—a million of them. How are we going to live together? When you do an injustice to her, what do we do about that? The Egyptian law has no sway on us anymore. And so, if we are going to be a nation, we need to know how to administer justice. A lot of these laws are about, “If this happens, then this must happen next. If you do this, then here’s the punishment that comes next.” These laws are all about governing the nation of ancient Israel and administering justice in ancient Israel.
Then there’s also the religious laws. These are a people who have been freed from a nation, but they’ve also been freed from their worship practices—their pagan worship. And so now God is going to say, “Here’s what it looks like to worship the one true God.” We’re no longer worshiping the sun, the moon, the stars, the river, the frogs, the gnats, and the locusts; none of that. Now we are going to worship Yahweh, the one true God. And so He passes along religious laws about how the Israelites’ priesthood will be put together, about the sacrificial system, what animals are pleasing, what animals are not for these religious laws, what purity looks like, how worship is to be accomplished.
There are moral laws, national laws, and religious laws. I think this is important to grab a hold of because as we read through there, we get really confused on which law do I listen to? In fact, one of the things that many people who are not Christians will do is they will say, “Well, look at this national law. You’re a bad Christian because you don’t obey that national law,” or “Look at this religious law; you’re a bad Christian because you don’t obey that.” And so if you’re not going to obey that one, I don’t need to obey that one.
The problem with that is all of these laws are teaching us something, but not all of them are applicable to us outside of ancient Israel. Let me put it this way: the various laws apply differently to us today because we are not the nation of ancient Israel and because Christians do not practice Judaism. But let me also say this: This doesn’t mean we scrap all of the laws, and we don’t read them. We just read them differently. The moral laws are transcultural. They go across all generations, all cultures, for all time because they reflect the character of God.
Ancient Israel and Judaism, these laws do not apply to modern-day Christians. However, what we do do is read these laws and ask ourselves this question: What is this law teaching me about who God is? What is this law showing me about who God is? And essentially, what we see is all of the laws in the Old Testament essentially show us these two truths. When you read these laws, we see that God is holy and just, and we also see that sin is dangerous and distancing. That God really cares about injustices, and He asks us to stay away from sin because of what it does to us personally. And whenever we do step into these areas of danger that distance us from God, God’s justice is real, and God’s justice will come into play.
This is important to understand because essentially what God is going to be testing Israel with is this: Will you guys believe me this time? I’m going to give you these laws. Will you believe me this time? Can we go back to the Garden of Eden real quick? In the Garden of Eden, there were also laws. Do you remember the laws of the Garden of Eden? You may eat of all the trees of the fruit of this garden, but there is one that you cannot eat from. One simple law. One easy law, really: Eat anything you want except from this one tree.
But then the serpent comes in and tries to convince Adam and Eve—and does so successfully—that God’s laws don’t matter. We don’t need to take advantage of them. In fact, we should disobey them. The serpent says, “Did God really say… I know He gave you the law, but did God really say, do you really need to listen to His voice and obey His laws?” And then the serpent also says to Adam and Eve, “Well, surely God would never punish you for breaking one of those laws. That’s not a good—A good God wouldn’t do that. Will disobedience to law really bring death?”
Here’s what we’re going to learn: God is holy and just. God takes His regulations seriously because sin is so incredibly dangerous and it distances from God. We’re going to learn this: that the serpent wasn’t the problem. Egypt wasn’t the problem. It’s the heart of the people that’s the problem. Which voice are they going to listen to?
And so God tells Moses, “Indeed, tell them this: Indeed, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you will be my treasured possession among all the people.” How will Israel reflect the image of a holy God? Through the law. This becomes a pillar of the Jewish faith in the Old Testament.
The second question we got to ask is this, and this is something provided at the top of Mount Sinai as well. The answer to this question is this: How will God dwell with His people? And the answer that God gives Moses is the tabernacle.
If we’ve got the lineage, we’ve got the land, now we’ve got the law. How will God dwell with? What will dwelling look like? And so God tells Moses, “Here’s what I want you to do. There’s the laws; pass those along to the people. But here’s this thing I want you to build. I want you to build something for Me. I want you to build a home for Me.” This home is called the tabernacle.
The tabernacle doesn’t seem like much on the surface. If you’ve ever seen a drawing of it, maybe you’ve had one of those old Bibles; it’s got the drawing of the tabernacle and the temple in there. You look at the tabernacle, and it’s not very impressive at all. It’s like something that was made out of Dick’s Sporting Goods. It just looks like a tent with ropes holding it together and a little tent wall around it. Essentially, all it was was this big portable tent.
But what it represents changes everything. The tabernacle marks a history-altering moment in the story. Here’s what it changes. Here’s what it says. Here’s what it communicates: That God is moving to town again. God is moving back into the neighborhood. This is a big deal.
From this point prior, God had been reigning over all things, raising up a Joseph, raising up an Abraham, raising up a Moses, and on occasion meeting with individuals. But now, all of a sudden, God says, “I’m moving back in. I’m coming back to dwell with my people just like I did in the garden.” The tabernacle, for Him, serves as the visible sign that He is among His people.
God said, “I want you to set up this tent, and then I want everybody to build their tents around that tent so that I’m the center of this community. So that when you wake up in the morning, you leave your tent, you see the tabernacle. The whole community sees the tabernacle.” Then He says, “And then we’re going to move closer to the promised land. A few more miles down the road. Pack up the tent. Take it with you. Set it out. Build your houses around it again. We’re going to keep doing this all the way to the promised land.”
What’s He trying to emphasize? He’s trying to emphasize that “I’m with you. I’m with you in the journey. I’m on the journey with you. And I’m not leaving you.” Here’s what He’s trying to emphasize: “I’m not a God who lives on mountaintops. I’m not a God who lives in heaven. I am a ‘with you’ God. That’s the kind of God I am. I am a with-you God. Where you go, that’s where I will be.”
For the first time since Eden, God plans to establish His dwelling place among a people. Friends, let me remind you of the story of the Bible. The story of the Bible is of a good, holy, and just God who is seeking to be with His people. Now God says, “I’m moving back to town. I’m moving back to town.”
In Exodus chapter 25, starting with verse 1, this is how He tells Moses about the tabernacle. He says it this way: [text missing here]
Two things I want to point out here. First, one of the things God tells Moses to do is take up an offering. You know, when you go back down to your people, like pass the offering plate, pass the buckets around. Let people give an offering so that I can receive this offering and we can build this tabernacle. Take that contribution.
However, I want you to know, Moses, that this is different than the law. Notice what He says here. In verse 2, it says that “From every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive the contribution for me.” So Moses, don’t go down there and command them to give. I don’t want those gifts. What I want is the heart. Like Moses, just collect from people whose heart is there, that were they to ask the question of themselves, “What do you desire most?” What they desire most is my dwelling with them. And if they want me to dwell with them, I want them to participate in my dwelling. I want them to participate in my presence moving into town.
And with those gifts that you receive, then make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst. If you’ve got your Bible open, underline that: “that I may dwell in their midst.” This is the story of the Bible. This is the summary of the Bible: a God who creates Eden so that He might dwell in their midst; a God who asks for a tabernacle or a temple that He might dwell in their midst; a God who sends Himself in the flesh of a man named Jesus of Nazareth that He might dwell in their midst; a God who, it’s promised at the end of all creation, He’s going to return and create among us a new heavens and a new earth so that He might dwell in their midst.
What is God’s heart with the law? What is God’s heart with the tabernacle? This is His heart: It’s not enough that we have a relationship. We need a relationship of proximity. I am a with-you God, and my desire is to be with you. Build this tabernacle that I might dwell in your midst.
It goes on in verse 9 of Exodus 25 to say, “Moses, exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.” Essentially saying, “Moses, take up an offering. Let it be voluntary, but I’m going to give you the pattern.” And it’s an interesting contrast between those two passages: we see that the offering is voluntary, but the pattern is not.
The offering is voluntary. Anybody can participate. You can choose to participate in bringing God’s presence among the people, but if you’re going to participate, you don’t get to choose the pattern of how it happens. The offering is voluntary. Your participation is voluntary, but the pattern is not.
What I love about the heart of God is He’s not going to force Himself on you. God desires to be with you. I know for some of you, that’s a foreign idea. Why would God desire to be with me? Can I tell you? He does because He’s a with-you God. He’s not an in-heaven God. He’s not on a mountaintop. He’s a with-you God. He desires to be with you. He’s going to invite you to participate with Him in all that He’s doing, but He’s not going to force it on you. Forced love is not love. And so God gives you a choice.
But then He says, “If we’re going to do this together, it’s My way, not your way. It’s My pattern, not your pattern.”
God welcomed Israel’s participation in making the tabernacle possible, but they were not going to be allowed to design the pattern of how it would happen. And you know that’s what they would want to do: like, “I love the idea of God living with us again. Here’s how we should do it. Moses, that tabernacle looks horrible. Let’s use this color. Moses, let’s make it this big. Moses, let’s do it this way. I think this would honor God if we would do this instead.” And God was like, “No, no, no, no. You can give towards it, but you’re going to use My pattern. We’re going to do it My way.”
What this should teach us is that in the with-God life, participation is voluntary, but the pattern is not.
You know, I’ve heard it said this way, maybe you’ve heard it too. It’s not a bad phrase, but it’s interesting how it’s said, that when it comes to Christianity and what we get to do as people with God, we’re not about religion. We’re about relationship. I’ve said that. Maybe you’ve said that. Maybe you’ve heard other people say that. It’s like, “I’m not part of a religion. I’m part of a relationship.” I’m not part of a religion. I’m part of a relationship.
Which is technically true, but I fear what we actually mean when we say that is actually, “God, I want a relationship with You, but I don’t want Your guidelines in this relationship. I want a relationship with You. I want Your presence, but I’m really not interested in the pattern. I want You to dwell with me, but I want to choose how it happens. I want to make the rules.”
I think this is one of the most frustrating aspects of following God for many people: that we want the relationship with God, but we also want to set the terms for God. We’re so drawn to Christ and who He is, and then we see laws and rules and things we need to do and things we don’t need to do. “Well, I don’t need that. I don’t need this. I just need a relationship. I want a relationship, not a religion,” when in fact, I think we say, “I want God’s gifts, but not God’s guidance.”
I think that might be what our heart is pronouncing to God. We do it in a variety of different ways. Seeing Christian people so desire God but also so desire relationship with one another, and they say, “God, I want Your presence in my relationship, but I don’t want Your guidance for my relationship. I want You to be in this relationship, but we’re going to have sex before marriage. We’re going to move in. We’re going to cheat on. We’re not going to hold a covenant in the guidelines that You have given us, but we want Your presence, and we want Your blessing over it.”
“God, we want the relationship. We just don’t want the regulations.”
When it comes to our finances, “God, give me a job. Bless me with a job. Help me provide, but Your guidance when it comes to generosity, I’m not interested in that. I don’t need to do that to be a Christian because, after all, I just want the relationship and not the regulation.”
“God, when it comes to what I do with my life, when it comes to my sexuality, when it comes to my finances, when it comes to my work and my career, God, I want You to be in it, but I don’t want Your fingerprints on it. I want the gifts, but not the God. God, I want the garden, just don’t start telling me what to do in the garden. And if You’re going to do that, you can dismiss yourself. Just leave the garden for me.”
This is going to be the test that the Israelites face. Moses, he’s just been given the law. He’s just been given the pattern for the tabernacle, and he’s just been told that God is going to move into their midst. And soon, Israel, with the law in hand and the tabernacle packed up and ready to go, they’re going to move through the wilderness to the promised land. It’s quite the journey that they go on.
Along this journey, Israel is going to face this same question time and time again: Do you want God, or do you just want the garden? Do you want the promised giver, or do you just want the promised land? I think everybody wants the garden. Non-Christians want the garden. Christians want the garden. Everything in between wants the garden. Not everybody wants its God.
And I’ve got a feeling that maybe there are people sitting here today because they think that they can get a garden from God; that if I show up, if I read the thing, if I say the thing and I pray the thing, maybe I’ll get a garden from God. You can’t have the garden without its God. Desire God.
What makes this garden so good anyway? Why do you want the garden? I’ll tell you what makes the garden good: it is not the land of the garden, and the rivers and the trees and the fruit. It’s not the lineage that was in the garden. Adam and Eve, they were pronounced very good when God created them. At the exact same time, what we see is there’s something very off in their heart. So it can’t be Adam and Eve that made the garden good. It can’t be the law that made the garden good, of God’s law about what they should and shouldn’t eat of certain fruits. So if it’s not the land, the lineage, and the law that made the garden good, what’s left? It’s the God who dwelt in the garden. That’s what made it good.
And you know the thing about that? If you have the God who dwells, then wherever He dwells—in whatever land, in whatever family, in whatever relationship, in whatever regulations or rules that are provided—if God is there, that’s where the garden is.
In Israel, they’re going to need to know that, because they’re getting ready to go through not a garden but a desert. And so one question is going to remain as Moses takes the law and the pattern of the tabernacle down that mountain to deliver it soon to the people of God. He’s got to be thinking this question, and I know he is: Will this people succeed where Adam and Eve failed?
We have a fresh start. We’re a free people. God is moving back to town. Israel now has the law. God is moving back into our presence. Would we listen this time? Will we trust Him this time? Will we believe that He is good this time? Would we hear His voice and then obey His voice? Will the Israelites trust that God is the goodness? Will they trust that God is the blessing? Right now, I think Moses believes so.
I’ll tell you this though, he’s getting ready to find a people at the bottom of that mountain who have already turned to another God. And a major test lies ahead for this new nation as they travel through this barren desert, this fruitless desert, this difficult wilderness.
What do you really want? Do you want Egypt, or the promised land? If you want the promised land, then the question has to be: Do you want the garden, or do you want the garden’s God? And maybe that’s a question you should ask as well.
Why are you here? Do you want the garden, or do you want our good God?
Would you stand with me, and let’s pray.
Lord, we stand in this moment recognizing that You are good, and there’s something off in our own hearts that desires not Your goodness but good things. And God, teach us that all good things come from You, that You are the blessing, that You are the goodness. And God, the things that we’re desiring most in life right now, God, I know they’re not things that are inherently evil, maybe not even things that You don’t desire for us as well. But God, my prayer is that above all things, that we desire You, because when God dwells with us in our presence, in our hearts, there’s no desert there. There’s only garden. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Everybody say it with me: Amen.
Start the Conversation