FBC Daily Devotional – March 17, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Good Tuesday to you. I hope you're looking forward to what the

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Lord has in store for you today. What is on your plate? What are those responsibilities that the

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Lord has given to you? Do you ever look at that plate and say, boy, you know, there's really not that much significant that's taking place in my day.

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I'm not, I mean, I just do thus and so and whatever that is. Well, a long time ago,

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I learned a prayer that I pray literally every day, and it's tied to the verse that tells us to number our days, that we may apply our heart to wisdom.

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So, prayer goes something like, Lord, make me to know mine end and the measure of my days, what it is,

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I mean, how frail I am. But then, Lord, teach me, teach me to number my days, that I may get a wise heart and that this day would count for something worthwhile, something worthwhile, care how big or how small, but something worthwhile.

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Maybe that'll help you to start your day as you pray every day.

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Well, in our reading schedule, we're getting into that section of Exodus that a lot of us find to be a tad tedious.

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You know, there are some people who love, love detail, and they just really thrive on all the minutia and the details of a book or a writing or whatever.

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And so, this section in Exodus that we're getting into where the Lord reveals the detailed plans for the building of the tabernacle and all of the accompanying components of that tabernacle, detail -oriented people find it fascinating.

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Those who have an engineer's kind of mind or a mathematical kind of mind, they find it fascinating, and they thrive on these passages.

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But not everybody does, and I understand that. But what I would encourage you to do is to, as you're reading through these chapters, to ask yourself a question.

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What does this tell me about God, these instructions about the tabernacle itself?

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The other day you read about the gold lampstand and the table for showbread and so forth, and now we're getting into the tabernacle and the construction of the tabernacle itself, and what do these things tell me about God, the one who's giving the instructions?

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Well, I can think of several things, just kind of off the top of my head, if you will, just kind of surfacely thinking about it.

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For one thing, this all tells us that God is a God of purpose and planning.

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Purpose and planning. None of this is haphazard, none of it is without functionality of some kind, and that function may simply be to point in a direction and to communicate a message.

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But it all has a purpose. But God is also a God of planning, because remember, when the

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Israelites were leaving Egypt, the Lord told them to basically plunder the

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Egyptians. Ask them for everything, anything and everything, and they'll give it to you. And sure enough, they did.

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They just piled it on. They gave them jewels and cloth, textiles, and very expensive, elaborate things, all kinds of stuff they gave them.

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And why? Why did God want them to do that? Well, it wasn't so that on the way they could shop at Walmart and pick up what they needed, that's for sure.

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No, he had them plunder the Egyptians so that they would have the materials available to give for the building, the construction of the tabernacle and all of its component parts.

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God's a God of purpose and planning. He's also a God of design. As I mentioned, there's nothing slipshod about this tabernacle structure and all of its details and the different elements that comprise the tabernacle structure facility, nothing haphazard about it at all, nothing slipshod.

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In contrast, it reminds me of a church that I preached in one time, and the church was considering me as a candidate for pastor, and I walked in the building and I knew this was not going to be a good fit, if for no other reason.

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What I saw was a whole bunch of slipshod, haphazard, slapped -up kind of stuff.

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They needed a little more space, so instead of going through a planning process and getting drawings and all the rest of that stuff so that everything would function and flow right, it was a mess.

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It was a mess, and that reflected something on the church, because the more

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I learned about the church, the more I saw it reflected the character of the congregation.

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Everything was just kind of, yeah, whatever, whatever, it doesn't matter, da -da -da -da -da. Well, that isn't reflecting our

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God. God is a God of design. He's also a God of detail, of intricate detail, down to giving instructions, down to the clasps that hold the curtains in place.

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They needed to be made out of a certain material, made in a certain way. He's a

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God of detail. Of course, one thing this tabernacle structure communicates is that God is a

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God of beauty and order. You can't imagine in your mind's eye what some of these pieces of furniture or fabrics and so forth, how splendid they must have been, how beautiful they must have been.

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Fabrics with gold filament weaved in those textiles to create an image of cherubim and so forth and so on.

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He's a God of beauty and order. He's also a God of revelation.

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Listen, where did Moses get these instructions to build the tabernacles? He goes back to the people later on, he says, here's how we're going to build this tabernacle, so we can build this tabernacle, and he's going to give instructions to Bezalel and these artisans to make certain things.

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Where did he get that information? God revealed it to him, and furthermore, he did so that he might reveal himself to teach his people about himself and his character and his ways.

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God is a God of revelation. Now, how does all of this apply to us?

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Well, I think one thing is we can ask ourselves the question, does my life reflect the

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God that I worship? The God who lives in our tabernacle?

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He said, you are the temple, you are the tabernacle, you are the dwelling place of God. Does my life reflect the fact that God is a

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God of purpose and planning and design and detail and beauty and order and revelation?

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Do I make much of that, his revelation? So shouldn't it? I profess to be a follower of Jesus, I profess to have him dwelling within me, then my life should in some way, in some measure, in increasing measure, reflect that.

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I think this also can be applicable to even our gathering places of worship.

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I don't think they need to be ornate cathedrals like you see in some of the

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European countries in those Roman Catholic cathedrals. I don't suggest that. But I do think that whatever we have that we build as a place for meeting together with God, that they ought to be facilities that reflect our

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God to some degree, to some extent, showing order, showing design, showing purpose, giving attention to detail, and even some aesthetic or some ornamentation, some beauty about it, because our

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God is like this. Our God is like this. So again, in the next several days, you're going to be reading through this section on the building of the tabernacle.

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Look for God. What does it tell you about God? Our Father, teach us, teach us in these passages, in these chapters, in the book of Exodus, what you are like and what you like.

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And this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your day today, and I trust