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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: 2024-04-11
+
+content: |
+  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.