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