Louie Giglio - Alive In The Presence of a Holy God
This is the most interesting time to be alive because all of us are moving quickly to this moment and this place where everything happens on our terms. "I'm good, I'm fine, I'm great just the way I am, and I wanna do everything in life on my terms, and I will let you know what my terms are, and I will live life on my terms". But I just wanna remind us all today, we're living in God's world. We're living on God's earth. We were created in the imagine of Almighty God. The breath that we breathe today came from the God who created us. And everything in the world doesn't happen on our terms. It all happens on God's terms.
And this amazing creator, God, who wants a relationship with you, is gracious enough today to let you know that relationship has to be on His terms. It's kind of like going to the Masters. You go on their terms. Anybody been to the Masters? And all of a sudden at Trilith, it's kind of like, it's a golf tournament they have it in Augusta. I'm not sure, somehow in Cumberland last night people knew about it, but maybe not at Trilith. Anybody been to the Masters in the last few days? Hello, few people here. One person here. Okay, great. Not a big golf fan down at Passion City Church Trilith. When you go to the Masters, you go on their terms.
In other words, there are no fans at the Masters. There are patrons at the Masters. Nobody is pulling behind them a Yeti cooler coming into the Masters. Just not the way it works. This is a cut above, people. The dress is appropriate. I don't know what appropriate is, but it says on the website under the rules for the patron, "Appropriate dress". And I guess, people just figure that out. I'm not really wearing my Van Allen T-shirt, you know, to the Masters. I'm gonna be appropriate. No trash is thrown at the Masters. It's amazing to see 50,000 people show up at a sporting event and there is not one piece of trash on the ground.
And if somehow one accidentally falls to the ground, a person coming behind will quickly pick it up and put it in the trash can because you come on their terms. You can't heckle the players at the Masters. The Waste Management Championship in Phoenix, absolutely, appropriately named, by the way, was called the Wasted Management Championship. And you can go crazy. At the Masters, you can't run. Oh, you can be excited and walk really fast, but you cannot run. You can't bring a camera during play. And the most crazy thing of all, you cannot bring your phone. You leave that in the car. So, think about that. All those cars parked at the Masters, all got phones in them. And people say, "Okay". They know, "If I'm gonna come and be apart of the tradition unlike any other that I've gotta come on the terms of the men and the women in the green jackets".
That's how you come to the Masters. You come on their terms. And when you come and accept this invitation into a relationship with the God of Heaven who is glorious and perfect and righteous, you come on His terms. If you don't, then you don't come. We see that in the very beginning of our story, Genesis 3. Everything has gone wrong. God has created paradise. It's called Eden. And in Eden, God is in relationship with Adam and Eve. So, yes, they had a job to name animals and steward creation. And yes, it was perfect and beautiful, and they had each other.
But the main thing about Eden was they were in fellowship with God. He didn't just make them and plunk them down on a rock and say, "Have a great life". He made them for relationship with Himself. And He said, "Here's my terms. In this garden, you can have everything but one thing. Those are my terms. And this one thing will bring you death. So, everything else is yours. This one thing is not. It will bring you death. These are my terms". And we see right from the beginning that He's a good God. We see right from the beginning that He's not withholding anything from us. We see right from the beginning that He has our best interest in mind.
We see right from the beginning that God is a God of love, but He also has terms. And the terms were everything except one thing. But what did Adam and Eve do? They did the very same thing you would have done. You say, "I would not have done that". No, yes you would have because we have a tendency to gravitate to the one thing, not everything. And when God says, "You can have it all, but this". We go, "What is this? This, interesting. What do you think that is? Why do you think we can't have that? What you think He's tryna hide from us with this thing over here"? And He's like, "No, no, no, everything". And we're like, "I know. That's amazing, but this is interesting".
And in the moment that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they died. Not physically, but spiritually. In that moment, sin entered into humanity with the tragic consequence of them being separated now from a Holy God. As the story comes down at the end of chapter 3, we see this, "The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and He clothed them. And the Lord God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and to take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.'" You say, "What does mean exactly"?
It means now that Adam was in a state of being separated from God and spiritually dead, had he eaten from this tree again and lived forever, he would have lived forever separated from God and spiritually dead. And so as a result, "The Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. And after He drove the man out, He placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim," Can you say that with me? Cherubim. What did He place there? Cherubim. "And a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life".
One man on one day in one act brought separation for all men from a Holy God. And God placed a cherubim there to say, "You cannot come back and enter into the tree of life". You may have never noticed that cherubim, but I want you to think about the cherubim today. This cherubim wasn't some sweet little angelic being who just sort of leaned on the east side gate of Eden and said, "I'm so sorry. You're not gonna be able to come in today". This cherubim was fierce and ferocious, a flaming sword going back and forth to prevent humanity from stepping back into God's perfect place. And then, Jesus now is hanging on the cross at 3:00 in afternoon. He cries out, "Why have you forsaken me"? Then He cries out again, "It is finished".
And then He gives up His life in death for you and me. And Matthew says the very first thing recorded after the death of Jesus was the see that started in Eden now is being finished at Calvary. That when God put the cherubim at the eastern side of Eden, He had a plan. And the plan wasn't that men could go in and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and live eternally separated from God. God had a plan that He would make a way for man to be restored in relationship to a Holy God. And that plan began to unfold in eternity, but now it's unfolding in real time in human history.
And that plan leads to Jesus. That plan leads to the Son of God being born in Bethlehem and at His birth it was said about Him, "Call His name Jesus for He will save His people from their sins". And now, here He hangs on a cross. He says, "Why have you forsaken me, Father"? And then He says, "It is finished". And when He cries out and dies, Matthew says the very next thing that happened was that the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Now, why is that recorded as the very first thing after the death of Jesus by three of the gospel accounts? Because this is the symbol of the separation of the cherubim in Eden who said, "You cannot come into God's holy place".
The curtain in the temple, can we talk about it for a moment? In Jerusalem on the Temple Mount, a place where God's people had worship through the ages and in this place of worship was the temple. And the temple had an outer court and an inner court, a holy place where the priest would minister. And then inside the holy place was the most holy place, the Holy of Holies, twenty cubits by twenty cubits by twenty cubits. A cubit being the length of someone's arm, so thirty feet by thirty feet by thirty feet. And in the Holy of Holies is the Ark of the Covenant of God, this chest containing the Ten Commandments, covered with the mercy seat, with two cherubim made of gold facing one another on top of the mercy seat.
And this ark represented God's presence among His people. It was the most holy place because it's where God said to Moses, "This is where I will meet with you". But it was so holy that if someone looked at it, they would die. And so, a curtain was hung, the veil. The scriptures recorded that it was woven with skilled craftsmen with threads of blue and purple and crimson, and woven into the veil were cherubim, just like Eden, saying, "These are my terms. Don't come in here or you will die because I, the Lord God Almighty, am Holy".
Only one day a year could one person go into the Holy of holies. On the Day of Atonement, different from Easter time, Day of Atonement happening in the fall, the high priest could enter into the Holy of Holies to sprinkle blood on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant of God as a symbol of the people's remorse for their sins. It would happen year after year, after year, after year, and the people of God would fast and pray. The people of God would be sad for all the wrong that they had done, and the one man on the one day would go into the Holy of Holies and sprinkle blood on the Ark and on the mercy seat. It was so treacherous that a rope was tied around the man in the event that he died in the presence of Almighty God.
They would pull his body out under the veil. And on the fringe of his robe were small gold bells all around so that the priest in the holy place could hear the holy man moving and know he's still alive in the presence of a holy God. These are God's terms. And on the day that Jesus died, in the moment that He gave up His Spirit, that veil was ripped in two from the top to the bottom. This message was partly inspired by us being in Israel a few weeks ago. I mentioned it here to all the folks at Passion City Church a few weeks ago that while we were there, we met an archaeologist who's a renowned archaeologist in the Holy Land, discovered some amazing things in the last ten or fifteen years.
And he had taken us to an active archaeological site, a place right under a neighborhood just near the Temple Mount where the pilgrimage road has been excavated. This walkway, where thousands and millions of pilgrims would have come up to the Temple Mount for the festivals and the feasts. And deep below ground, this roadway has been excavated and is being excavated to this day. And he took us down there and took us into this little place where they've built a covering over the top. And for a long way, you walk up to the Temple Mount on this thousands year old pilgrimage road, which has been down there underneath civilizations. And he told us while we were there, he said, "And I also found something else amazing in this area".
He goes, "We were excavating a drainage channel which came out of the Temple Mount and down along this way, and it would collect water, and storms, and rain, and it would collect waste, and maybe some sewage that was put there by people. And we found the drainage ditch and begin to excavate it. And down below the layers in a drainage ditch, we found the only one of these things that's ever been found before from the time of Jesus". And he showed us this picture of what they had found. It's one of the little bells from the bottom of the robe. And this archaeologist looked at us and said, "It's the only thing on earth that we know of that may have actually been in the Holy of Holies".
And I just need you to know today that this God sifting down through the rubble to say, "Check this out". And to let this bell... this bell actually still rings. They did some testing on it and some infrared imaging and can see the little clapper inside of it and how it works. And I thought it does still ring and it's still ringing today, the bells of Easter and a Holy God are still tolling today, and the bell rings for you, and the bell rings for me. And what is that little bell saying today? A few things that you've gotta walk out with today. Number one, it's saying that God is determined to get to you, and He is determined to get you to Him. The second thing that little bell is saying today is that the way was made by God. God has made the way.
Easter has a why, and what is the why to Easter? God wants to have a relationship with you. You say, "Well, how does that happen if it's gotta be on His terms? How does it happen"? Here's how it happens. God makes the way. Heaven makes the way to Heaven. God makes the way to God. God is not saying to you today, "Hey, you've messed your life up and here's how you now have to make a way to me". God is saying, "When my Son died, I made the way, and I showed you I made the way by ripping that veil in two and saying you now can walk into the holy place to the mercy seat of Almighty God, and you can see the mercy seat and live".
God made the way. They worshipped in this temple, by the way, for decades after Jesus died. Eventually, Jerusalem was destroyed and this temple was destroyed. But for decades they still worshipped there. Someone's job was to either make a new veil or to repair that one. And I can't think of a worse job than being the person tasked with sewing back the veil that God Himself had torn in two. You know, some people love their religious system more than the grace of God. And what God is saying today is, "I made a way. The system is finished, and I'm making a new way. Yes, it's on my terms because I'm a Holy God. But my terms of holiness are satisfied in the death of my Son, and you can now come through my Son and have a relationship with the Holy God".
Mercy and grace and holiness wed on God's terms. I've shared this today before, but a few years back Shelley and I went to the Masters, a tradition unlike any other, and we went with a former champion of the Masters. And so, we drove down Magnolia Lane, and parked where the champions parked, and walked through the clubhouse, and eventually out to the first tee. And we're standing on the first tee watching our friend tee off for the opening ground. And as he's teeing off, Shelley just slightly lifts her phone up and takes a photograph of him, a phone that she has because we came down Magnolia Lane and we didn't come through a metal detector, and nobody, you know, searched us and made us take stuff out of her pockets. And she just had the phone.
And so, she's just like... and I'm like, "Oh, no". And then I turned, and right here is one of the members, green jacket, who's in charge of the first tee, and we're this close together. Tapping Shelley, she turns... just very quietly. Miraculously, we had met this man a few weeks before at a dinner. Praise God. And he said very calmly, "Shelley, please put the phone down". She's like... And I'm like, "Oh no". 'Cause if you have a phone, you get kicked out. And being a good husband, I'm thinking to myself, "I don't know what you do in Augusta, babe, but you'll be good. I'll see you at 7:30".
And he just very quietly says, "Please", he knew how we come in. He said, and it's just, you know, right back there. He goes, "Please, go and put the phone away". I said, "Thank you, God". Mercy. Their terms, but with mercy. The little bell is ringing today. God made the way. He's still just. Look at the cross. He is still righteous. Look at the cross. He is still perfect. Look at the cross. But He is a God of mercy. The veil has been torn in two. And that little bell ringing today is telling you that Jesus was forsaken by God so that you never will have to be forsaken. In an instant, there was a cherubim keeping Jesus from the tree of life. A cherubim saying to Jesus, "Out of Eden".
Forsaken and cut off so that you could be accepted and grafted in. It was God's way. Jesus did not die, interestingly, on the Day of Atonement. You would think that would have made total sense, right? The day that we go in and sprinkle on the altar every single year would be the day that Jesus would die one time for all times so that the demands of God would be satisfied. But Jesus didn't die on the Day of Atonement. Jesus died on Passover, by the way, which is this weekend. We know exactly when Passover is so that God could say it's not a holy man doing something once a year. It's Almighty God offering His perfect Son as a final sacrifice. And lastly, that little bell ringing today what it's telling us is that God wants a relationship with us.
John 17:3, this the way Jesus said it, "And this is eternal life, that you may know Him, the one true God, and that you may know Jesus Christ whom He has sent". This is eternal life and this Easter. Yes, we wanna know that there's life after death. Yes, we wanna know that the grave is not our final resting place. Yes, we wanna know that the tomb is empty and the stone is rolled away and Heaven is our future. But this is not the story, people. God's not interested in just getting you to Heaven when you die. God is passionate about a relationship with you every single moment of your life, and this is what the bell tolls for today. It is about knowing God.