- Weekend: Exodus 16 - 18
- Monday: Exodus 19 - 21
- Tuesday: Exodus 22 - 24
- Wednesday: Exodus 25 - 27
- Thursday: Exodus 28 - 31
- Friday: Exodus 32 - 35
In Exodus 18, we also see the first MBA class taught by Jethro, Moses' father in law. He tells him: if you want this business to succeed, you better introduce some organizational structure, cause you can't run this enterprise - comprising over 1 million people - all by yourself!
It is obvious that God wants to be involved in the lives of His people. But He does expect something in return, and that is obedience. Under the old covenant, the people of Israel did not have the Holy Spirit poured out on every individual like we who live under the new covenant. So God gives them some 'simple' rules to live by. Like a Father who wants to protect His children, He tells them what they can do and what they can't by giving them the 10 commandments and the accompanying rules and regulations. He tells them in Exodus 19:6: "Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
The people are excited, and in verse 8 they all respond together: "We will do everything the Lord has said." Well, will their actions follow their words as they proclaimed? That's a question that is relevant for our everyday lives as well. Read on to find out how the people of Israel did.
Dick
Reading through the almost mind-numbing detail about how God wants the Israelites to order their lives, it makes me wonder, what changed? From Abraham until now, God touched the people's lives rarely and often with general and cryptic instructions (although sometimes He was very specific, but usually only to one person). It seems almost hard to believe that now God wants to give instruction in long accounts about how to live and how to build the Tabernacle. Did God just decide that now was the time to take a greater role in the lives of the chosen people? Or is it a question of how Scripture came to be, since some of this detail seems pointless to my modern ears. I guess I am struggling for meaning to my life in much of these accounts. Maybe it is to be found in larger themes rather than individual verses.
ReplyDeleteGood questions, Steve, but you got me worried now. You call this ‘mind-numbing detail’, and we haven’t even started Leviticus and Numbers yet!! :)
ReplyDeleteIf I understand your comment correctly, you’re questions boil down to three things: 1) Why all the detailed instructions at this point in history, 2) Why all the detail? and 3) What is the relevance for my life? I’ll try to give you a couple pointers for these three.
The answer to the first one is real practical I think. When God called Abraham, He communicated indeed to just 1 person with his family. This line of communication continues with Abraham’s son, Isaac, and with Isaac’s son, Jacob. Jacob gets 12 sons, and by the time they all move to Egypt, the family has grown to 70 people (Gen. 46:27). However, in a matter of 4 generations, this family grows to over 1 million people!! (Exodus 12:37: 600.000 men on foot, besides women and children). So the question is: how do you keep the behavior of 1 million people in check?? The answer is simple: spell it out for them in detailed instructions! When thinking about it, it’s not that different today. The laws of our day are actually way more detailed than those instructions in the Bible. And yes, reading those is mind-numbing as well. Thank God for lawyers, law makers, students, etc., right? :)
I want to add to that, that the peole did not have the Holy Spirit as an individual guide either. I like to compare that with ‘children who are growing up’. Young children need a lot of instruction. Do this, don’t do that. They don’t know it all, and we have to teach them literally everything. As they grow older, typically they become wiser, as they learn to make the right decisions for themselves (hopefully!). Their ‘spirit/mind’ grows, so to speak. Likewise, God’s children in the new covenant, who do have the Holy Spirit as a guide, typically have more understanding of what it is that God likes and doesn’t like, because the Spirit convicts us and instructs us, as the Bible says. There’s a lot more to say on the subject, but I hope you get the point.
Now on to the second question, Why all the detail? I’ll keep it short, but over time, I’ve come to understand that God is a God of detail. If you look at creation, and specifically the human body, there is incredible detail. Scientifically, we can’t still comprehend the complexity of it all. I mean, the human body consists of trillions of cells (trillion = 1e12). Each cell kernel contains 46 chromosomes consisting of long DNA molecules, which contain roughly 100.000 genes. The genes are the functional areas of the DNA, which contain the genetic code that prescribes how each protein should be build from the amino acids. The proteins control almost everything in our body, embryonic growth to food digestion to fighting off illnesses.
ReplyDeleteBack to the detail of the tabernacle. One question we can ask ourselves is: What house would we build for God if he asked us to make him a dwelling place because he wanted to live among us? Well, God gives the Israelites the instructions what it should look like. In the letter to the Hebrews, we learn that this tabernacle actually is a copy or shadow of the heavenly tabernacle, see Hebrews 9. It goes too far to explain it all here, but there is incredible symbolism in the details of tabernacle, and how it refers to God’s redemptive plan of mankind. For example, there is an atonement cover on top of the ark, that covers the Testimony, which are the laws on stone tablets (Ex. 25:16-22). God says he will reside between the cherubim on top of the atonement cover (v.22). In other words, when God looks at the law – and the incapability of mankind to keep the law – He looks through the atonement cover. To say it differently: God looks with eyes of atonement upon sinful human beings, which shows His great mercy that has been there from the beginning of mankind. The Levitical priests understood this symbolism and the detailed elements served as an object lesson for their worship of God. So the details do matter, and we will see them back in heaven, but then with a full understanding of their meaning. Unfortunately, a lot of the symbolism of the Old Testament has been lost in our culture.
I hope this also covers your 3rd question, about the relevance for our lives. The details do not form the foundation of our faith, but understanding them a little better draws us even closer to and brings more reverence to this incredible God.