There’s a point where a house becomes a home. If you have been in a house for some time you know that moment where you start to think of it less as a place to sleep, eat and keep your stuff and more as your “home.” For some of us that included being able to wait for the construction of the home, then moving all our stuff in, hanging photos on the wall and creating memories. For others you found the perfect place to rent through a series of what felt like coincidences but it was the perfect place at the perfect time. What needs to happen to turn a house into a home for you?

Exodus 40:34-38 tells the story of how the Tabernacle was filled with God’s presence, it was more than a place of sacrifice and ritual, it was a place to meet God and for God to be with his people.

Money has a unique allure in our world. Remember your first paycheck or the first time you got a large gift. Some of us are eager to save it away others have a hole burning in their pocket and want to spend it. Money does have the capacity to buy you a lot of freedom, security and satisfaction in this world. Yet, with that comes a false promise that it can be your pleasure and protection. In Exodus, God gave his people great wealth as they left Egypt and along the journey in the wilderness he asked them to give some of that back to the project of the Tabernacle. Let’s not miss this, God who has no needs and created everything out of nothing asked his people to contribute to the building of his dwelling place in their midst. Why does God want his people to give back to his work when he owns it all? Why does God call his people today to give and offer up their resources generously? Let’s explore. 

Over the last few study guides we learned about the theme of God’s presence and what the various elements of the the Tabernacle communicated about God, specifically that he made a way for his people to dwell with him. We now turn to the construction of the Tabernacle and how God organized the workers and empowered it all with his Spirit. Exodus 31:3 is actually the first time we’re told that God’s Spirit filled someone in the Bible for a divine task it is in this passage. It was not Abraham, Sarah, Moses, or Aaron but rather Bezalel who was first filled with the Spirit of God to oversee the construction of this sacred space. Many of us would think it would be for some other purpose, but God empowered someone as a project manager with his Spirit. This should alert us to how important the Tabernacle was to the life of the people of Israel and how God often uses ordinary means to communicate his glory. 

Have you ever toured a historical site before? Often the tour is led by a docent who volunteers who lead you around and try to bring out all the curios details that makes the place special. They call our famous people who have been there before, where the furniture originated and the important historical things that took place. So when you visit Gettysburg, Sutter’s Mill or the West Hills Red Portable you get a nice breakdown of all the amazing things that took place there. We cannot visit the Tabernacle or Temple today, but in Scripture God does something similar with how he gave the details and plans for the Tabernacle with one particular change, instead of starting from the entrance, God started with the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the covenant and worked his way outward to the entrance, but the description did not end there, God brought the focus back to the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies and by doing so gave us an amazing picture of the gospel. 

As the people of Israel lived in the wilderness they would set up camp around the tabernacle because the tabernacle communicated God’s presence in the midst of his people. It was a daily reminder to them that God desired reconciliation and presence with them and would make it happen in his plan of redemption. This study guide will look a the imagery associated with the Tabernacle and how that carried forward to the rest of the Bible to highlight to us the dwelling place of God with his people and that ultimately in and through Christ our reconciliation to God is restored. 

God dwelling with his people is one of the major storylines in scripture. The Bible opens and closes with the people of God in his presence with full and complete fellowship. Yet the middle of the Bible is filled with example after example of how sin messed that up. That is because sin separated us from God. God’s plan of redemption made a way to access his presence for the people of Israel, and that presence was fully restored in and through the person and work of Christ. 

Our text immediately comes right after Israel’s big sin of idolatry with the golden calf and we read God’s response promising to send the people to the promised land but to not go “in their midst.” Basically, they’re offered an opportunity to have the Promised Land but not the one who promised it. If you could have blessings God has promised without God, would you take it? Moses knew that would be to miss the main thing they needed more than anything else and interceded on their behalf and in that intercession we get one of the most powerful pictures of God’s grace in all of the Bible. 

It can be a spiritual challenge to wait on God. In those seasons our faith can be stretched and we can be susceptible to doubt, temptation and sin. In the narrative of the golden calf, we read about the people of Israel’s inclination towards disbelief; indeed God described them as a “stiff-necked” people meaning they were stubborn and set in their ways. The people of Israel had seen God move powerfully over and over again in their redemption and provision in the wilderness, but in this text they struggled to trust God. They were alone and leaderless. There was no timeline for Moses’s return from the mountain, in fact he had been gone longer than expected and possibly thought that God had struck out against him. Lest we forget the recent context of Exodus, they had also recently fought a military battle against the Amalekites who were still close by. What do they do in the face of all this uncertainty? Well…, they mobbed up on Aaron to make them an image a god to worship. 

When you find yourself in seasons of waiting without a clear understanding of what comes next, do you feel your faith get stretched? How do you battle doubt, temptation and sin during those times? 

What we wear can communicate a lot about who we are and what we’re doing. You likely would not wear sweatpants to a funeral or a suit to the gym. Clothing styles shift and vary with time, but in every culture they communicate something from reverence to rebellion to relaxation. Our passage teaches on the clothing of the priest in great detail! Probably more than any other passage in scripture we get a picture of the rich symbolism of clothing related to one’s vocation. It is an interesting feature that in the Old Testament almost everything about worship was given very specific detail even down to the colors of the priest garments and the length of the tassels on his robes, and yet we do not have that same level of detail in the New Testament for worship. God commanded the priests to dress in a particular way and consecrated them to their priestly activity so that they’d communicate his glory and beauty and represent the people of God before him, and in that we get a picture of Christ (Exodus 28:1-2, 9). The writer of Hebrews desired that we see Christ as the true and better priest who represents us fully before God. 

There’s a part of us that desires to know the future and have some certainty that things will be easy. Often in life we can coast on cruise control, but other times we have a deep sense of uncertainty about what comes next. If you could know the future, would you want to? Do you think it would help you trust God more?

One of the things that made Israel distinct in the ancient world was how they were commanded to care for the powerless. Many nations in the ancient world lived by a survival of the fittest mindset and that started with how they viewed the individual value of people. The only person who was made in the image of God, in many ancient nations, was the king and that was it. In the beginning God said “let us make man in our image.” That includes every human being regardless of how society defined their worth. 

If someone damaged your property today whether that be your car, home or land you’d likely lean on insurance to handle the damages or some of the social systems in place like the police department and civil courts to pursue damages for loss incurred. Basically, if someone ran into your fence with their car you’d expect them to pay to have it fixed, or that you’d have the civil networks to get it fixed. What about a nomadic wandering people waiting to enter the promised land? What about a society given their values and laws from God? For any community to flourish there needs to be a sense of respect for property and laws in place that guide a proper response for when things go bad.

The Old Testament Law can be one of the most complicated parts of our Bible to understand. We finished exploring the 10 Commandments and now God turns to giving his people laws related to slavery, crimes, worship and what to do when someone is injured or harmed. This can be confusing for us because of how foreign some of these concepts are to our modern culture. For example, Exodus 21:7-11 discuss what to do if you were to sell your daughter to marriage. This was seemingly common practice in the ancient world but is an abhorrent idea to our modern ears! Also, this passage talks about slavery as if it is an “ok” thing, does the Bible support slavery? When approaching these laws it is really important to see how they differed from the legal codes of the surrounding nations and to understand that many of these laws are given by God to respond to human sin, so rather than painting the ideal God is pointing his people towards a righteous response when things are broken.

If you were to ask people on the street today if they thought Jesus was a real human being, the vast majority of them would say “yes!” If you were to ask them if they thought Jesus was God or a spiritual being like an angel, the majority of them would likely say “no way!” The surprise is that in the ancient world it was reversed. Our world today struggles with things that seem miraculous or spiritual, but the ancient world thought the idea of Jesus taking on a human nature was a sort of demotion at best or evil at worst. Much of this came from a negative view of the created/physical world (we are starting a Sunday morning class on what it means to be fully embodied people and how that relates to our worship of God in August if you’re interested in exploring this more). Many of the New Testament letters are concerned with teaching correct theology that Jesus was fully God AND fully human and that this was needed for our salvation. One such place is Hebrews 2, let’s explore seven reasons why Jesus became human and how that is good news!

Prayer can be both natural and something we can learn an grow in. Many people experience an impulse to pray from an early age that likely comes from being created in God’s image and seeing his glory in the world around us. We have a deep seeded knowledge of God’s existence, but sin and secularism fight against that and often that impulse to pray is lost. Likewise, prayer can be learned. Followers of Jesus can grow in their knowledge of how to pray and what to pray for. In the gospel of Luke, the Lord’s Prayer was a direct response to to the disciples request to Jesus, “teach us how to pray.” In the gospel of Matthew, it comes during the Sermon on the Mount as Jesus talks about what it means to practice the kingdom of God. In both situations, Jesus wants his people to have a model of prayer they can follow so they can grow to pray.

Suffering may be the greatest challenge and greatest catalyst for prayer. Some circumstances show our helplessness and drive us to the Lord, other times we can feel distance and disappointment, especially when our suffering is ongoing with no end in sight. Many of us have heard a presentation of the good news as “God has a wonderful plan for your life!” What if that wonderful plan includes hardship and suffering? It almost certainly does. Another challenge is that we can often put expectations on God that he has not promised us and then be disappointed or let down when he doesn’t fulfill our expectations. We can also get trapped comparing our suffering to the pleasant and joyful lives of those who do not follow Christ and wonder what  God is up to (see Psalm 73).  

Prayer is an expression of faith and trust in God. In prayer we not only express praise to God but we ask for him to work in ways that we are powerless. This kind of prayer requires faith. Faith is an expectation that we can depend on God, that his work is for our good and that he desires for us to seek him. The gospels are filled with many examples of people going to Jesus in faith for things they could not accomplish through their own efforts and Jesus rewarding their faith and trust. This is not a formulaic way to get God to do something for us, that is superstition and something Jesus warns against (Matthew 6:7). Likewise, praying in faith does not require us to shed all of our uncertainties or doubts (Mark 9:24). Instead praying in faith is an expression of dependent trust in God and is key to a regular practice of prayer. 

Prayer is an ordinary and everyday activity in the Christian life. We have an incredible access to the God of the universe and we are invited and encouraged to bring him our needs, shift our attention to what he is doing and to talk with him throughout our day. We are not alone or distant to God. It may surprise you but praying at all times is actually a command in the Bible! This commands comes in the form of “pray always,” “be constant in prayer,” and “pray without ceasing.” Does this mean we spend out days with our eyes closed and heads bowed for all our waking hours?! No, instead this command invites us to live life with God who is always there. 

Does prayer even work? Well, that depends on what you mean by “work.” Many of us think of prayer primarily as supplication, which is asking God for our needs or for him to work in a specific way. Paul tells us in Philippians 4:6 to bring him our requests, God desires to hear them. We know that prayer is more than supplication, prayer is our human experience of conversation with God where we can bring our needs to God, praise him for who he is and what he has done, and experience his presence, especially in times of suffering. Yet often when we wonder if prayer has any purpose usually it is when we’re wrestling with supplication. Does our prayer change God’s mind? Does he hear our prayers? If God is sovereign, does praying even matter?