Tag: Christian living

Morning Musing: Exodus 39:32-43

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“So all the work for the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, was finished. The Israelites did everything just as the Lord had commanded Moses. . . .The Israelites had done all the work according to everything the Lord had commanded Moses. Moses inspected all the work they had accomplished. They had done just as the Lord commanded. Then Moses blessed them.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There’s an old saying that goes like this: Practice makes perfect. It sounds good, but it’s not really true in that form. A more accurate rendering would be this: Practice makes permanent. If you do something enough times, you will always do it that way. But if you don’t do it quite correctly all of those times, you will always do it wrongly. In order for practice to make perfect, it has to be evaluated. Once the tabernacle construction was complete, it came time to evaluate what they had done. Let’s take a look at how this process unfolded.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 36:2-7

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“So Moses summoned Bezalel, Oholiab, and every skilled person in whose heart the Lord had placed wisdom, all those hearts moved them, to come to the work and do it. They took from Moses’s presence all the contributions that the Israelites had brought for the task of making the sanctuary. Meanwhile, the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. Then all the artisans who were doing all the work for the sanctuary came one by one from the work they were doing and said to Moses, ‘The people are bringing more than is needed for the construction of the work the Lord commanded to be done.’ After Moses gave an order, they sent a proclamation throughout the camp: ‘Let no man or woman make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.’ So the people stopped. The materials were sufficient for them to do all the work. There was more than enough.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things you have to learn as a parent is that you can’t do everything for your kids. Some parents learn that lesson better than others. You can typically tell which parents are which by looking at their kids. If you do everything for your kids, they won’t learn to do anything for themselves. They won’t learn to take ownership of things and make their own responsible, informed decisions. They won’t gain the satisfaction of contributing meaningfully to a project, of working hard and seeing the fruits of their labors. When God commanded the building of the tabernacle, He could have just plunked it down in the middle of camp fully completed. But He didn’t. He brought the people in on the project. And, to their credit, they responded. Let’s talk about what we see here and how God still works today.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 35:4-9, 20-29

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“Then Moses said to the entire Israelite community, “This is what the Lord has commanded: Take up an offering among you for the Lord. Let everyone whose heart is willing bring this as the Lord’s offering. . .Then the entire Israelite community left Moses’s presence. Everyone whose heart was moved and whose spirit prompted him came and brought an offering to the Lord for the work on the tent of meeting, for all its services, and for the holy garments. . .So the Israelites brought a freewill offering to the Lord, all the men and women whose hearts prompted them to bring something for all the work that the Lord, through Moses, had commanded to be done.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How is God’s work accomplished? The answer is in all kinds of ways, but there are two basic categories into which all of these different ways can be sorted. The first category is when God does His own work by Himself. Creation would be an example of this kind of work. No one helped Him with that. It was all God from start to finish. Salvation also falls into this category. The second category is when God does His work through us. This is a much larger category because it’s how God usually works. We see this kind of work happening as Moses finally calls the people to begin the actual construction of the tabernacle. Let’s explore what’s going on here.

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Ask Away

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This week we are starting a brand-new teaching series. One of the things I try to do as a preacher is to give my congregation a balance of more topically-driven series that explore one idea throughout the Scriptures, and more textually-driven series that see us working through a single passage of Scripture together. This is going to be one of the latter journeys. For the next four weeks we are going to be working through the record of the Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk. His little book is different from all of the other prophet and speaks to some of the tensions that have been present in every age, including this one. Let’s start this journey together as we see the prophet ask God some hard questions.

Ask Away

Have you ever asked God a hard question? Maybe a better way to ask that is like this: When was the last time you asked God a hard question? There were a lot of people asking God hard questions in 1755 and the next decade or so. Just three days ago in 1755 there was an earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal. A big earthquake. A deadly earthquake. The total loss of life was somewhere between 40,000-50,000 people. The thing so many people struggled so much with in the wake of that particular earthquake was that Portugal was a really Catholic country. Portuguese were on the whole faithful Catholics. It seems like that should have earned them some points with God. At the very least a whole lot of folks were thinking they should have been spared from the worst of it. But, no, the epicenter was there, and it was bad. 

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Morning Musing: Exodus 34:29-35

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“As Moses descended from Mount Sinai — with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands as he descended the mountain — he did not realize that the skin of his face shone as a result of his speaking with the Lord. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face shone! They were afraid to come near him. But Moses called out to them, so Aaron and all the leaders of the community returned to him, and Moses spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he commanded them to do everything the Lord had told him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever Moses went before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out. After he came out, he would tell the Israelites what he had been commanded, and the Israelites would see that Moses’s face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went to speak with the Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter) ‬‬

Do you remember the first time you fell in love? I’m talking about high school – or maybe even junior high – puppy love. With a bit of life experience under your belt, you quickly recognize that’s not the real thing, but don’t bother trying to convince the starry-eyed youth of that. You’ll be wasting your breath. Thinking back to that time, when you got to spend some time around your crush…excuse me…the love of your life…you weren’t the same as you were before. You were a little spacey. You probably had a sappy grin on your face. Maybe you even whistled a tune. Anybody who was around could tell that you had been around your heartthrob. You weren’t the same as you were before. When Moses had spent some time with the Lord, he wasn’t the same, and everybody could see it. Let’s see what kind of sense we can make out of this interesting end to the chapter.

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