The Big Crescendo (Part 1)
The Big Crescendo (Part 1)
a commentary on Exodus 40 (Context)
Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Good morning everyone and welcome back to another Biblit! To be precise, welcome to our final Biblit through Exodus!
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Ok, I think I overcommitted again. In my head, Thanksgiving was going to be a great week to write the last Biblit.
Work is usually either slow or off completely.
However, I forgot how much time goes into driving, spending with family, cooking, cleaning, scrapbooking, and all sorts of fun stuff.
Not to mention Taylor and mine’s second anniversary was also Thanksgiving week 🙂
All that to say, I apologize for being a couple of weeks late in getting this Biblit out. But perhaps this will be better timing anyways.
I know it’s all in God’s timing. It wasn’t His plan for me to release a Biblit Thanksgiving week.
So here we go!
Exodus 40, the big crescendo. Let’s jump into the context!
Context
If you didn’t read Exodus 36-39, you can at least skim the big subtitle sections. If you do that you will see they are indeed a big repeat of the instructions for building the Tabernacle.
Except it just shows them actually building it.
One cool tidbit I learned is that at today’s price of gold, they used about $62,000,000 of gold for everything! That’s insane!
Anyways…
Exodus 40 starts back up with God speaking to Moses.
Everything is built and ready to go. All they need to do is assemble it.
The Setup
And this is exactly what God says to Moses:
“You are to set up the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, on the first day of the first month.” (Exodus 40:2 CSB).
God goes through all the items and structures Israel just built, one by one, telling Moses to set them up, and to place them in their perfect position.
Then He tells them to take the anointing oil and consecrate literally everything. The furnishings, the tabernacle, all of it. So it may be holy.
God can only dwell in a holy structure.
Once all the tabernacle furnishings and structures were made holy, He had Moses bring Aaron and the priests dressed up in their special clothes, so they could be anointed too.
This acted as the official inauguration into the priesthood throughout all their generations.
What did Moses do after God commanded him to do all of this?
He obeyed God completely. Every command, Moses obeyed to a T.
And now that I think about it, it does not specify if Moses was allowed to get help, or if he actually did all of this setup work alone.
Some of those golden basins and the ark and stuff has got to be heavy!
Either way, in the end, everything got set up. Now all they have to do is sit back and watch.
And that is exactly what Israel did.
God’s Glory Filled
They sat back and watched as the Lord’s glory filled the tabernacle. A massive cloud came and covered the tent of meeting.
At night there was a massive fire inside the cloud, so they knew God’s glory was always present in the tabernacle.
And Israel, from that point on, would pack up and move anytime the cloud left, and they would stay in the camp while the cloud stayed. Following God wherever He went.
Or in other words, God once again dwelt with His people! Something they’ve talked about for half the book of Exodus. The big crescendo! God had not dwelt with His people in over a thousand years!
And now, after all this time, He is able to dwell with them once again!
This scene had to be the most amazing thing Israel would ever see!