The most unreasonable circumstances

This lesson or concept or whatever you want to call it spans almost the entirety of the book of Exodus but specifically chapters 19 through the end of the book. The specifics of the story that I am discussing here are found throughout the book and I will leave it to the reader to search the scriptures for the specifics I am paraphrasing below. The arrival at the base of the mountain of the Lord is chapter 19, the rebellion and golden calf are at chapter 32 followed by a retelling or reenforcing of the concepts of the previous 40 days within the next several chapters and then ending with the dedication of the tabernacle and God’s appearance to the people within a cloud showing His approval of their obedience and work. Specifically below I am only addressing the concepts of their circumstances and why I believe that God felt it necessary to demand the construction of the tent and tabernacle occur at this time and under the circumstances they found themselves.

After traveling about 47 days through the wilderness along the Red Sea down the Gulf of Suez and then crossing over the Red Sea around the entrance of the Gulf of Aqaba and shortly after they witnessed the splitting of the Red Sea there as they passed across on dry land and watched as the Egyptians were swept away in the water. They arrive at the mountain ranges of Mt Sinai/Horeb and setup camp there while Moses ascends the mountain to receive the commandments. For 40 days Moses is absent from them while God etched his instructions on the first stone tablets. During this 40-day period the Hebrews become restless and discontent while Moses is absent and begin reverting to what they had become because of their 400 years in the Egyptian culture.

In the Exodus account there are several different perspectives that should be examined to begin to understand the emotional and spiritual dynamics at play in the story. First, Moses had become fully immersed in his understanding of God’s leadership and had become accustomed to being patient as God revealed himself and led him to trust that God had a plan for the people he was now leading through the wilderness to the promised land. For Moses he had already made a similar journey from Egypt through the wilderness and had previously changed because of that journey. Having made the transition from Egyptian prince to a shepherd and son-in-law to Jethro, he had already gone through the transformation that now the rest of the nation was only just beginning. Moses would have already attained a level of trust in the mysterious nature of God and how He changes us over time from one person to another. He had experienced the loneliness of the wilderness, the starvation and thirst of traveling such a great distance and then the mysterious and spiritual nature of God as God had appeared to him in the burning bush and then witnessed God’s power working through him in the plagues and miracles that were performed through him resulting in their eventual release from Egypt.

Aaron would have had a much more personal understanding of all the mysteries of how God had transformed and then called Moses into his role. So, Aaron would have had a better understanding of God’s nature because of the first-hand account of God’s communications with Moses through the past 40 plus years. Aaron as Moses’ brother and co-leader would have had a much better grasp of the patience he needed to have; however, he had not undergone the same types of transitions personally, he had not witnessed the burning bush or experienced the desert crossing himself. He had not yet learned to trust God to take care of all his needs in the same way that Moses had, because he had not yet endured the same trials and transformations. So, his faith was based not on personal experience, but on the secondhand accounting of his brother. And now while Moses was absent from them for such a long period of time he lacked the personal experience and conviction to hold the nation to the task of patiently waiting for Moses to return from the mountain top. He didn't yet trust that God was still watching over them and knew what they needed, so he bent to the will of those around him out of a lack of personal experience.

The rest of the nation of Hebrew slaves, now freed men, would have had even less of an understanding of what was happening here at the base of the mountain. Day after day they would have been sitting there wondering what was happening or what they were waiting for. I don’t know if there is anything similar in our lives to spending a great many days waiting for God to deliver us from challenging circumstances and into an unknown “promised land” of the future. Perhaps our own transitions from children and young adults and into the roles of husbands and wives and parents, the transition from childhood to adulthood as we become responsible for our own decisions and choices. We can relate in some ways to this transition as we face the unknown future and transition from having been surrounded by adults who are taking care of all our needs, to young adults thrown into the wilderness of the world, full of harsh realities that our parents and relatives largely protected us from seeing.

As you examine the realities of the people there at Mt. Sinai/Horeb while you are reading the story for yourself. It is easy to see the story from Moses’ perspective because he is the one who wrote the account down for us to read. I believe the heart of the story and its purpose is lost in the reading for most people because we don’t take the time to meditate on all of the nuanced portions of the story. We see things in the historical context as history and experience it’s retelling in a matter of hours or days as we read the retelling, and we miss many of the lessons when we don’t take the time to make it’s retelling apply to our own lives and our own growth. Moses recorded all these stories so that we would reflect on them and learn from the retelling “what” and “why” God was desiring by delivering the nation of Israel from their captivity, and not just that He rescued them but also the when and where of that “what” and “why”.

I believe after spending most of my life reflecting on this story and its lessons and then finding myself within the story that at least for me, this story is personal. God is wanting me personally to find Him and His heart and His desire for my life’s purpose as an individual apart from my relationship to the greater community around me. As Luke so eloquently records in Acts 17 while recording Paul’s sermon to the people of Athens at the Areopagus “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

Understanding this: “God’s desire is that we would seek Him and find Him”, and “He does not live in temples built by hands” then why did God command the construction of the Sanctuary Tent? Especially at the time and in the circumstances that they were commanded to do so? What is/was the purpose of this construction process? What life lesson is God wanting us as his children to understand here? There is a purpose to every sentence recorded in the scriptures, countless lives have been dedicated to the preservation of this story in all its detail. So, what is that purpose for us here in this particular story?

For me the purpose has become a little less fuzzy as an individual, and as it relates to the church family or God’s people, or the community of people with which I find myself. I am not sure if you will “see” what I see or “understand” in the same way that I understand, because it’s a lived vision; “sight through experience”. It’s not something you can understand simply through classroom structured teaching or inspired spiritual sermons. As great as some of those may be. Like Jesus so plainly states “If you hold to my teaching, then you’ll know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Hearing the lesson does not mean that you fully know the lesson. For this reason, I believe the tent process was created to teach the spiritual lessons God was trying to communicate, and through action those deeper spiritual truths would become known on the deeper spiritual plain of understanding. The circumstances under which God commanded that the tent be constructed, and the necessary care and maintenance for it to be dragged from one location to the next are as important as the final worship experiences and memorials and festivals under which the tent would be used to facilitate.

The importance of understanding or accepting this lesson is hard to quantify. This depends on the traditional world you grew up in. For many cultures the care and craftsmanship of creating things is deeply engrained into the culture and it’s natural for people from some cultures to expect that millions of dollars and thousands of hours would be spent in creating a special temple or location that reflects the respect they have for their guiding principles and culture. In the culture I grew up in I was taught not to trust authority, organized leadership structures, be it government or religion or even the authority figures within my own family. In direct contrast, as an individual I am incredibly driven to create experiences artistically and I identify myself through what I create and produce. For me, even though I may have a hard time trusting authority I am dependent on authorities to provide the opportunities to create in public spaces and express my feelings about the world on the stages where people can experience my creativity. This need within me was placed there by God as a way to force me to wrestle with my lack of trust in people and find a balance in forcing others to see and hear my creative needs while respecting their differences.

The tent represents a need in us as human beings for connection and purpose that in many ways supersedes the need for basic necessities like water, food or shelter. God in his wisdom allowed the events here at God’s Mountain to unfold purposefully exactly when they did. In an unreasonable and foolish time and place if you consider the circumstances. Should they have been dedicating all of their time and resources to building this big elaborate structure that would need to be assembled and disassembled multiple times and dragged around from one place to the next? It was impractical to expect so much from the same people who demonstrated such a lack of trust. Yet this is exactly what God is demanding from these people. When you look at your own life and compare it to these different expectations God was expecting them to trust that if they focused on God’s house then He would take care of the needs of their own houses. If you focus on God’s house, then He will feed your family miraculously. This focusses all the attention on Him and not us. We demonstrate our understanding of this principle by doing the work and allowing God to raise our families and take care of their needs while we are absent doing His work. These people at the mountain needed food and water and shelter and while going through the periods of starvation and thirst God was showing them how strong they really were. God was saying to them that He knows how He made them, and He made them much stronger and resilient than they understood, and only by forcing them to live without water and food would they finally trust that He would provide it when they actually needed it, not when they wanted it. He was through circumstances trying to get them to understand that He would give them all they needed for life and happiness if they would only follow the instructions he gave them. Since they didn’t understand this and became distracted by the moaning of their stomachs, he gave them something to do with their hearts and minds that would distract them from their hunger through creativity. This get’s people focused on producing beauty and helps them forget about food and water long enough to allow God to meet those needs.

The application of this principle in the life of the person reading these words will vary as greatly as there is variety of people and roles in this world. For me as a Bezalel or master craftsman, I feel responsible to facilitate or empower others through mentoring them to express their creativity and talents in the sanctuary, wherever that is, in the setting of the world where I find myself. I look to the spiritual leadership within my small portion of the world in which I live and ask them what vision God is giving them and where can I rally the troops to provide the execution of the experience that happens when we gather to reflect and worship and serve each other. For you the reader you may be a blank slate and need someone like myself to empower you to experiment and find that creative role that will both satisfy your need for involvement, but also to fit within the larger vision that God is pushing down through the structure of servants in the community you find yourself. You may be a spiritual servant/leader and looking for a way to empower your congregation or looking for a way to find a greater sense of unity and togetherness and purpose in the group where you find yourself and you need to search for a Bezalel who can execute the vision and inspiration that God is filling you with. Wherever you find yourself on your journey, there is a role for you no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, and if you are responsible for a group of people and trying to lead them and unify them spiritually then put in the work to understand this need, unity through service happens when there is inspired vision and empowerment, you may just need to find your Bezalel and empower him or her to execute the vision God is giving you within your congregation.