“All the skilled artisans among those doing the work made the tabernacle with ten curtains. Bezalel made them of finely spun linen, as well as blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, with a design of cherubim worked into them. . . .They made a medallion, the holy diadem, out of pure gold and wrote on it an inscription like the engraving on a seal: Holy to the Lord. They attached a cord of blue yarn to it in order to mount it on the turban, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.” (CSB – Read chapter 36; chapter 37; chapter 38; chapter 39)

I’ve talked before recently about the fact that my church is in a building process. We’ve been here for a long time. In fact, they have been slowly walking down this path for twice as long as I’ve even been here. Just before Covid hit we at long last thought we were at the point we could start building. But then we couldn’t because of Covid. And for a while we were pretty discouraged. All that work on developing plans and we weren’t going to get to actually build it. And yet, by God’s grace, here we are again: ready to build. Developing plans to build without actually building is pointless. Israel had plans to build. It was finally time to bring it into reality. Let’s talk about how that process unfolded.

Let’s state the obvious at the outset here: This is a really, really long section of text. It’s several times longer than what I usually include. We could walk through each of the sections in these four chapters, one at a time, but given that they are nearly word-for-word repeats of the instruction passages in chapters 25-30, that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Instead, I’m going to link you back to the instruction sections where we talked about the various parts and pieces then. If you’ll recall, many of those posts included links to a series of three-dimensional artist’s renderings that really help with our visualizing what they might have looked like. After that, I’ll highlight two other things, and that’ll be it for today.

The builders began with the tabernacle itself. We talked about that first back in June here. Next, the artisans built the ark of the covenant. Those instructions can be found in Exodus 25:10-22. We talked about them here. Following in order from Exodus 25, next comes the table, which we talked about here. After that is the lampstand. You’ll find that being built in Exodus 37:17-24, but it is first described in Exodus 25:31-40, which we talked about here.

The next piece the builders tackled was the altar of incense. That requires us to jump forward to Exodus 30 in the instruction sequence. It was mid-August before we got to that. Here’s that link. The beginning of Exodus 38 takes us to the altar of burnt offerings which appeared much earlier in the instruction cycle in Exodus 27. We talked about that almost a month before the altar of incense here. From there, the builders went to the bronze basin, completing the various major pieces to be set in the courtyard. That swings us back over to Exodus 30 in the instruction cycle. Here’s that conversation. The last thing they made before taking an inventory of the supplies they used and moving to the priestly garments was to make the courtyard where everyone could gather. That sends us once again back to chapter 27 and a conversation that happened here.

As I just mentioned, the next thing we find in Exodus 38 is an inventory of the materials that had been used so far. It’s a pretty impressive list. It included almost 2200 lbs. of gold, more than 7500 lbs. of silver (which included one hundred bases for the curtain posts that weighed 75 lbs. apiece. There was actually less total bronze at about 5300 lbs. All told, the tabernacle had to have been a sight to see. It was a feast for the eyes and a treat for the senses. Worshiping the Lord was never intended to be some stiff, stodgy, and sullen affair. It was to be a full-on sensory experience that engaged the whole person, heart, mind, and body.

That’s a lesson many churches today could stand to relearn. The act of worship teaches. When it is done badly, it teaches things that aren’t true. Following Jesus is never boring. But if our worship services are boring, we are teaching people that it is. Actively teaching something about God that isn’t true has a name in the Scriptures: false prophecy. God’s thoughts on that are fairly uniformly negative and generally rather violent to boot. When we worship, while it doesn’t have to be a show, it should be a fully engaging experience in which we seek to create connection points for as many different people as we can.

One author, Gary Thomas, identifies nine different ways that people connect best with God. He argues that each of us have one or two of those that are primary. That means not every single thing we do in worship is going to connect with everyone, but that just means that expanding our worship offerings to create as many connection points as possible is a good and wise and gracious thing to do. It helps us make sure that our worship involves our whole person rather than just one part of us.

Getting back on track, with the physical structure of the tabernacle now completed, the artisans turned their attention to the various priestly garments. This occupies most of Exodus 39. The parallel instruction passages are all in Exodus 28. In Exodus 39 they make the ephod, the breastpiece, the robe, the other garments, and finally the seal the high priest wore on his forehead, attached to the turban. In Exodus 28 the order is mostly the same except that the turban is described instead of strictly the seal, and the “other priestly garments” are mentioned last. Those posts are here (ephod), here (breastpiece), here (robe), here (the other priestly garments), and here (the turban with the seal).

And that’s the building of the tabernacle. The people were ready to worship. Well, they were almost ready to worship. First, God had to give them some instructions for how to do that. Those instructions occupy the next document in the Pentateuch, Leviticus, which we will tackle another time. There’s still a bit more of Exodus we need to finish up tomorrow and part of next week, and then we’re finished. A journey that started all the way back in April of 2023 will be completed. Coming up next, we’ll turn our attention to the Advent season. We’ll start our next journey through a whole book in the new year. I’ve got an idea of where that will take us, but I won’t spoil the surprise just yet.

Two more thoughts here. First, there may or may not be any actual significance to this idea, but the order of the building struck me as noteworthy. This is especially true considering that each section here repeats so much of the instruction cycle, but, as you just saw, puts it in a different order. The builders begin with the central space for worship. Then they construct all of the various elements that were to be used for worship. Next, they build the place where all the people could gather for worship. Finally, they created the tools for leadership.

To put that another way, worship was at the heart of everything they did. Once a space for worship had been created, they could set about bringing more structure and definition to that space. When this worship core was intact, an invitation to corporate worship was extended. The tools for formalized leadership (namely the garments for the priests) came last. Worship comes first. Glorifying God for who He is and what He has done; acknowledging, celebrating, and participating in His character is the foundation for everything else we do and think. If we aren’t doing that, we aren’t doing much else of significance.

The structure to this comes second to the act itself. This is because worshiping God isn’t something that can happen in only one way. We see lots of different expressions of worship throughout the Scriptures. As I mentioned a second ago, there are at least nine different ways that people primarily connect to God through worship. Different cultures around the world worship in different ways. Christianity is far and away the least homogeneous of all the world religions. Anyone who suggests otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about. There are a manifold of ways to worship the Lord.

One of the few truly consistent aspects of worship is that it was not designed to be only an individual experience. Worship should be corporate. Worshiping individually is fine, but if that’s the only way you are worshiping, you aren’t doing it right. You are missing out on the fuller expression that God designed you to experience. To put that another way, you can’t worship properly apart from the church. And while this isn’t totally necessary, it is nonetheless good and wise for worship to be directed by an individual or team who work together to lead God’s people in an experience of His presence as a body.

One last thing. Sometimes, following God feels very spiritual like when we are praying or reading the Scriptures or engaging in some other spiritual discipline that doesn’t seem to have a ton of real-world relevance. (Of course, the truth is that all of the spiritual disciplines have a ton of real-world relevance because they prepare us to engage with the world as it actually is rather than merely as we wish it would be, but a fuller exploration of that will have to be for another time.) Other times, though, following God can look intensely practical like building a physical structure to serve as a place for worship. The truth is that following Jesus is really both. It is abstract and concrete at the same time. This is because God isn’t looking to be Lord of only our hearts or only our minds. He is looking to be Lord of our whole lives; every single aspect of us. When we give our all to Him, He gives back even more. He gives us His kingdom that is eternal. Let’s get to following Him faithfully.