Blog post: Ex 29

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+---
+title: Who consecrates the tabernacle? (Ex 29)
+description: A quick, cursory and possibly completely rubbish observation I've made on Exodus 29.
+pubDate:
+  year: 2024
+  month: 04
+  day: 11
+---
+
+I've been reading Exodus recently, and the ending of Chapter 29 stuck out to me.
+
+For pages and pages (since Chapter 25!) God has been giving Moses exact and
+exorbitant instructions for how to build the tabernacle, what offerings to give
+upon it, who the priests are going to be, what the priests are going to be
+wearing. It's the fanciest IKEA manual you've ever read. No expense spared.
+Everything is drowning in gold, silver, incense, myrrh, silk, fragrant oil, you
+name it.
+
+What's this about? The answer seems obvious: it's to sanctify the temple! To
+make it beautiful enough and pure enough that even God could live there.
+
+But right at the end of Chapter 29, in vv 43-44, there's this wonderful twist:
+
+> ... and the place will be consecrated by **my glory**. So **I** will
+> consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar and will consecrate Aaron and his
+> sons to serve me as priests. (NIV, emphasis mine)
+
+All this work, and at the end of the day, it's **God** who sanctifies his own
+temple? So why all the fuss? Well, it looks like the final two verses of the
+chapter give us the answer:
+
+> Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. They will know that I
+> am the <span class="small-caps">Lord</span> their God, who brought them out of
+> Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am the
+> <span class="small-caps">Lord</span> their God.
+
+So on a cursory reading, it looks like God is telling them something
+extraordinary about the kind of God he is. He is not like the other gods, who
+demand this kind of worship to appease their pride. Nor is there, unlike the
+other gods, anything the Israelites could do to make a place habitable for him.
+That's because there's nothing the Israelites could do to cleanse themselves of
+their sin: only the 'glory' of God could do that. And indeed, God has no need of
+worship to puff up his pride, since his glory existed before the world was made,
+and human beings can do nothing to either add to it or subtract from it.
+
+Instead of a vain god who seeks tribute, this is a Father God who seeks to
+'dwell' (literally to 'camp') among his people. The God who has put into motion
+a rescue plan to pull the Israelites out of Egypt specifically for this purpose.
+As it was in the beginning, when God dwelt in the Garden with Adam and Eve. This
+is his mission. This is what he's like. And he wants his people to know this, so
+that they can dwell together.