Moses
March 5
Exodus 25:1-9
The Tabernacle (Holy Tent)
Moses stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, and the Lord told him many important things. The Israelites camping at the bottom of Mount Sinai had seen a dazzling light come down on the mountain. Now it was covered with cloud.
The Lord said to Moses, “The people must make a sacred Tent for Me so that I can come and live among them. Let them make an offering to Me and I will receive whatever anyone wishes to give.”
Then the Lord told Moses what the people could bring as an offering and explained to him exactly how the Tent should be built.
Can God fit into a tent?
God wanted to be close to His people as they wandered through the desert. He wanted to meet with His people just as He had met with Adam in the Garden of Eden before Adam sinned. The sin in Adam became like a wall between him and God.
Because of sin, people would never be able to go in and out of the Tent to meet God face to face. A special curtain in the Tent separated the people from God. Yet, God allowed the High Priest to go into the very Holy Place behind the curtain once a year to ask for forgiveness for himself and for the nation.
If God is bigger than the whole universe, how could He get down into a tent to be close to His people? (1 Kings 8:27). Just as an artist does not become part of his painting, so God does not have to get inside His own creation in a physical way. He can be everywhere and in one place at the same time! What is even more amazing is that God, through the Holy Spirit, comes to live inside every person who believes in Jesus!
Verse for today
For this is what the high and lofty One says--he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit..." Isaiah 57:15
