DAY 31

GETTING RIGHT SIDE UP

Exodus 25 & 26 and Matthew 20:17-34

Exodus 25-26 brings to my mind two words: details and beauty. For many years I was an engineer and worked with terrific engineers; people who pay attention to the details. Whenever I read these texts I do grin a bit because of the precise directions. In fact God says, “Do it exactly as the pattern I show you” in 25:9. Our ability as humans to create all these kinds of details flows from God. (Now I know we say all these things come from God, but it is fun to see it spelled out this way). If you want to see pictures and sketches check out “the-tabernacle-place.com".

Beyond the details is the beauty of what God is directing be built: gold, silver, purple cloth, fine wood and more. The internet is full of images that try and imagine how the finished product turned out. I was just in Charleston (about 4 days ago) and we were in several different beautiful churches. I missed my own, but I always love to see how different people over the years have continued the effort to make the place where God will dwell – beautiful. (and yes God dwells in us so we need to be about the details and beauty in us.)

In our Christian churches the sense of purpose to the design of both the floor plan and the furniture continues. I won’t try and unpack the meaning and the parallels of these in this blog, but it is fascinating and there are good books on the subject. There is a desire on our part to worship God in what we often call the “beauty of holiness” and we are reading about the beginning of this practice today. The risk is that we not turn our buildings into idols, and that we not become so inwardly focused that we forget our mission. 

All of this is at God’s direction, build it he tells them so that “I may dwell in their midst” 25:8. The word which we translate as tabernacle could be translated to “tent” or “dwell” with.   

This tabernacle with its furnishings will become the center of life for the Israelites. It will be the place where they commune with God. After many generations go by there will be another place that fulfills the same function in a much grander way. Offering and sacrifices will be made there. It is the Temple in Jerusalem.

The temple in Jerusalem is where Jesus is going in Matthew 20. He has set his face towards Jerusalem since Matthew 16 (Luke uses that exact phrase in Lk 9:53, but the episode is the same). We will read about a number of episodes where Jesus challenges the religious of the day, right in the Temple.

We are reading in the Old Testament about the construction of the first manmade place where God will dwell with his people. Tomorrow there will be even more details. Yet Jesus is on his way to challenge all of it because it has become corrupted. In fact he will replace it!

We see pieces of these corrupt practices right in Jesus midst. We see James and John’s mother, she perceives Jesus as Messiah, she makes a request of a person who in the system of the day would normally allot personal places of honor when his administration comes to power. That is how it is done in the Temple.

In contrast we encounter two “blind men”. (I put that in quotes because they “see” who Jesus really is, Son of David.) They are told to be quiet. Why? Because it has all gotten "upside down".  The important religious people don’t waste their time with the poor and downtrodden.

Think about how upside it has all gotten. We have been reading the laws that care for the poor and sick. By Jesus’ day they are on the outside, judged as somehow being beyond God’s help. 

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to turn it right-side-up. How? He has told us three times: See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.’

My main thought yesterday was that God goes to amazing lengths to choose us. Today we see the amazing lengths he goes to dwell with us. From the building of this traveling desert tabernacle, to the Temple in Jerusalem, and ultimately to Christ Jesus – who when He has completed his work makes it possible for God to dwell in our hearts (Ephesians 3:17, 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, and 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 to name a few). I know that is getting ahead of ourselves a bit, but that is what the story of the Bible is about. God revealing himself and revealing how much he is pursuing a relationship with us. We have already see this in Genesis 3 as God was walking in the garden in the cool of the evening seeking to be with Adam (Genesis 3:8). God goes to great lengths to keep US right side up.