FBC Morning Light – February 7, 2023

The Tabernacle’s Materials and God’s Instructions

Good Tuesday morning to you today. I hope your day, your week, got off to a good start yesterday, and that you're finding the Lord faithful as you carry out what he's called you to do in this world. Well, today we're in Exodus 25 and 26, and we're joining Moses on the top of the mountain, and the Lord is going to give Moses instructions on the construction of the tabernacle.

We obviously don't have any pictures of this structure that the Lord designed and gave clear instructions to Moses how to make it, what to make it out of, and so forth. But what's interesting is, what you remember when in the Exodus, the night that the Hebrew people left Egypt, we're told that they were basically able to plunder the Egyptians.

The Lord told them, ask the Egyptians for anything, and they'll give it to you. And they did, and they did. The Hebrews asked them for stuff, and the Egyptians gave them stuff. Gold, silver, all kinds of things, all kinds of things.

Well now, in Exodus 25, the Lord tells Moses to go to the people and ask them to make a contribution, to contribute the materials necessary for the construction of this tabernacle. Now look at what these materials are.

He says, this is the offering you need to take from them. Gold, silver, bronze, blue, purple, scarlet thread, fine linen and goat's hair, ram skins dyed red, badger skins and acacia wood, oil for the light, that would be olive oil, and spices for the anointing oil and for the sweet incense, onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod and in the breastplate.

And those stones, by the way, were precious stones. They weren't just, you know, pebbles that you picked up on the desert floor. Precious stones. These are the materials that the Lord tells Moses to ask his people to give.

So one of the things we see here is that the Lord expects his people to give sacrificially for the sake of providing for the construction of this facility, and it is to reflect not only functionality, but it is to be aesthetically appealing.

I mean, those materials are vibrant and expensive, costly materials that are going to be fashioned in a very beautiful and attractive way, and this is to adorn the dwelling place of the Lord. And that which adorns the dwelling place of the Lord should reflect well on him.

So the Lord asks his people to give in such a way that what is constructed can be beautiful as well as functional. I think there's some application of that today. Now certainly we don't have temples, we don't have the tabernacle as the Old Testament Israelites do, but you see in this, these instructions that the Lord gives, you do see the attitude that the Lord has toward the facilities that we construct and dedicate for him.

I'm sure these don't have to be, and should not be, extravagantly ornate, as many of the cathedrals are, and gilded, and all the rest of that kind of stuff, but they should be aesthetically attractive, and they should be well constructed, and they should use materials that reflect well on our God.

This is his, this is his building, this is his place. And so, you know, it's really kind of a shame when, you know, people go set about to, you know, build a building for a church building, and they cut corners, and they use cheap stuff that falls apart, and it's, you know, and the decoration, the decor of the facility is drab, and you know, it's just very unattractive, and you walk in and it feels like, eh, you know, really?

I remember visiting a church like that years and years ago, where I was to speak there, preach at this church, and I pulled up into the parking lot right in front of the building, and I took one look at the building, and I thought, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.

It looked like it had been piecemealed together. You know, there was the main part of the building, and then someone came along and slapped up an expansion, and that wasn't enough, so they slapped up another thing, and it just did not, it looked horrible.

You talk about curb appeal? Eh, it had none. And then when you went in the building, it was the same kind of thing. The auditorium itself was, you know, old and kind of dated and rundown, and there were rooms in that building that were just, you know, slapped together, and I was talking to one of the guys who was giving me a tour of the facility, and he said, yeah, you know, the pastor one day, he thought we needed to expand the auditorium, so he brought in a sledgehammer and just hammered away, and knocked out a wall here, and knocked out a wall there, that's why we got these braces up to help hold up the ceiling, and I'm like, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.

This does not reflect well on the God whom you say meets you there. Moses is instructed to have the people give materials that are going to result in a beautiful, as well as functional, facility. But another thing I want you to notice about this exhortation, or this opportunity for giving, is that the Lord says, he says, from everyone who gives it willingly with his heart, you shall take my offering.

Gives it willingly with his heart. You know, the Lord loves a cheerful giver. The Lord wants us to love him, and to love his house, and to love his glory and his reputation so deeply, that we are gladly, willingly giving, sacrificially, for the sake of the testimony of our God.

I trust that's the heart that we have, as we give to support our local church, and as we think about, you know, how does it look, what is its appearance like, is it attractive, is it aesthetically appealing?

Those are things that ought to be thought about when we think about where we meet together with our Lord. So we have a good pattern for it here in Exodus 25. So our Father and our God, I pray that our heart would be that what we do with our church buildings and our gathering places where we meet with you, that we would want those places to reflect well upon you, as well as we can make them to be.

Help us to have that kind of a spirit, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Alright, well listen, have a good rest of your Tuesday, and I trust the Lord will bless you in it. Good day.