Month: June 2024

Digging in Deeper: A Special Birthday Wish

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“Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised. Give her the reward of her labor, and let her works praise her at the city gates.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

First, as a matter of business, the schedule for the next month is going to be a bit topsy-turvy. My family will have the chance to be out of town for a couple of short stints, I’ll be gone an entire week chaperoning a camp, and in the next five weeks, I’m only preaching three times because of pre-scheduled guest speakers. Some days I’ll get blogs posted, some days I won’t. Some days we’ll be in Exodus as scheduled, some days we won’t. Next week, for instance, I probably won’t post anything until Friday, if that. The summer schedule is in full swing for us, and I’m going to do my best to put my attention where it needs to be most…which won’t always be here. Fear not, though, come August things will settle back down into our more normal rhythm. Now to the task at hand…

I’ve gotten started at a new church as pastor twice in my life. Both times there were a handful of people the group serving as ambassadors for us insisted we absolutely had to meet right away. In both cases these folks were the recognized spiritual giants of the congregation. When we were getting started here in Oakboro, one of those individuals was Peggy Carey. We said, “See you later,” to her just a few weeks ago. There was another, though, who the search team was just as insistent that we all meet and as soon as possible. We pulled into her house on Main Street, walked into her sun porch, and were promptly greeted with a loud, “Heeey, Honey!” I knew right away that Ma Mae was indeed someone who was going to be worth knowing. She still is. And she turns 99 tomorrow. This is just a Happy Birthday note.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 28:1-5

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“Have your brother Aaron, with his sons, come to you from the ISraelites to serve me as priests – Aaron, his sons Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Make holy garments for your brother Aaron, for glory and beauty. You are to instruct all the skilled artisans, whom I have filled with a spirit of wisdom, to make Aaron’s garments for consecrating him to serve me as priest. These are the garments that they must make: a breast piece, an ephod, a robe, a specially woven tunic, a turban, and a sash. They are to make holy garments for your brother Aaron and his sons so that they may serve me as priests. They should use gold; blue, purple, and scarlet yarn; and fine linen.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Mark Twain is famous for all sorts of literary things. His books, of course, are the most widely known, but he’s also famous for all kinds of witticisms. He was like the Benjamin Franklin of his era. One of his aphorisms was the observation that clothes make a man. I never liked that idea very much growing up because I wasn’t ever a big fan of having to dress up for anything (much to my parents’ regular frustration…something my own kids are paying me back for now.) And yet, as I’ve grown and gained a little bit more wisdom, I understand better just how right he was. This next part of the tabernacle instructions doesn’t tell us anything about what it looks like. It’s all about what the people leading worship in it were supposed to wear. Let’s take a look at the introduction to this next section as we prepare to examine all the priestly garments in the coming days.

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Morning Musing: 27:20-21

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“You are to command the Israelites to bring you pure oil from crushed olives for the light, in order to keep the lamp burning regularly. In the tent of meeting outside the curtain that is in front of the testimony, Aaron and his sons are to tend the lamp from evening until morning before the Lord. This is to be a permanent statute for the Israelites throughout their generations.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Candles have long played an important role in religious ceremonies and non-religious ones alike. The symbolism of light is easy and obvious to make. With nearly all of the main structures of the tabernacle now described and laid out for Moses to share with the Israelites, God turns His attention to some of the finer details. He starts with what will be the main source of light for the tabernacle. Let’s talk about oil, light, and seeing what’s really there.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 27:9-19

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“You are to make the courtyard fro the tabernacle. Make hangings for the south side of the courtyard out of finely spun linen, 150 long on that side including twenty posts and twenty pronze bases, with silver hooks and silver bands for the posts. And so make hangings 150 feet long for the north side, including twenty posts and their twenty bronze bases, with silver hooks and silver bands for the posts. For the width of the courtyard, make hangings 75 feet long for the west side, including their ten posts and their ten bases. And for the width of the courtyard on the east side toward the sunrise, 75 feet, make hangings 22.5 feet long for one side of the gate, including their three posts and their three bases. And make hangings 22.5 feet long for the other side, including their three posts and their three bases. The gate of the courtyard is to have a 30-feet screen embroidered with blue, purple, and scarlet yard, and finely spun linen. It is to have four posts and their four bases. All the posts around the courtyard are to be banded with silver and have silver hooks and bronze bases. The courtyard is to be 150 feet long, 75 feet wide at each end, and 7.5 feet high, all of it made of finely spun linen. The bases of the posts are to be bronze. All the utensils of the tabernacle for every use and all its tent pegs as well as all the tent pegs of the courtyard are to be made of bronze.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever driven down a street everyone had forgotten? All the houses were run down or boarded up. Some of the street lights didn’t work. There was trash everywhere. You probably locked your doors and rolled up your windows. You definitely didn’t feel welcome. How about a brand new neighborhood? That’s usually a totally different experience. Everything looks new and clean and very inviting. It makes you want to live there. That, of course, is the point. The developer has a lot of money to make back, and if the whole place looks unappealing, that’s not going to happen very quickly. How something looks on the outside affects your mindset when you go inside. God understood that, and so He took care to give the people instructions to make sure the front yard of the Tabernacle was inviting. Let’s talk about the courtyard.

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Giving An Answer

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Imagine you’re in a conversation and somebody asks you why you are a follower of Jesus. What would you say? For most of us, the very prospect of that situation unfolding is enough to make us break out in a cold sweat. The last thing in the world we want to do is to be asked a question about our faith that we potentially can’t answer. And yet, we are called to be able to give a response. Let’s talk today about the apostle Peter’s counsel on giving an answer and some practical steps we can take to be able to do just that.

Giving An Answer

We are a people given to fear. We fear all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. Go look up a list of phobias sometime. You won’t be able to pronounce most of them, but the definitions will at least amuse you. Some of them seem like they have at least some sort of a rational justification for them like a fear of snakes (herpetophobia) or heights (acrophobia). Others seem just silly like a fear of the number 4 (tetraphobia) or the color yellow (xanthophobia). Then there are some that seem like someone just made them up entirely so they could create a long, impossible to pronounce word like hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia which, of course, is the fear of the number 666 (which, in case you were interested, my spell checker actually caught and flagged as being misspelled; not because it is a random jumble of letters, but because I swapped and “e” for an “a”). Most of those fears, though, are pretty niche. I don’t know of many people who suffer from arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter getting stuck to the roof of your mouth. But there are some fears that are common and which have plagued humanity from time immemorial like death. 

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