How God Expresses His Love for UsSample

God’s Worship Tent

God’s Story

While Moses is on the mountain with God, God tells him that Aaron and his sons are to be set apart to serve him as priests in his tabernacle. God shows Moses what they are to wear and how to consecrate them.

Every day for a week, precious rams and bulls are to be sacrificed, and Aaron and his sons are to be painted with the offering blood and anointing oil. God will soak them in holiness. The altar is also to be consecrated with offerings, and daily sacrifices are to continuously burn on it.

After giving construction instructions for the furnishings in the tabernacle, God identifies two men, Bezalel and Oholiab, to whom he imparts creative abilities. They will lead the work to create the artful furniture and implements of God’s tabernacle.

The King’s Heart

God, the infinite Holy One, the Purity Presence, is so holy, so pure, that he is all-consuming. Just as light consumes the darkness, God’s holiness would consume unholy people if they entered into his presence.

When people have deadly illnesses — ones where personal contact means imminent death — we quarantine them. For a time, as God was relating to his people, it was as if he had lovingly quarantined himself. If he were to unleash even a bit of himself, his people would not survive.

But God wants to share his heart. The separation wouldn’t do. So the Sovereign-God made provisions. He made a way for his sin-stained people to draw closer to his perfectly pure presence. But the cost to maintain holiness while drawing sinful people near would be high.

God first made a way through the tabernacle. His people would feel the weight of the distance between them as animals gave their lives to serve as coverings. But the people could come closer to him.

Later he made a way through the complete, very personal “provision” — his own self, the lifeblood of his very own Son. He himself would pay the steep price to reconcile the impure with the pure.

God’s holiness is so great that the highest price must be paid to uphold it. But God’s love for us is so great that he paid it himself.

Insight

Incense often represents prayer in Scripture (see Revelation 5:8; 8:3 – 4). The altar of incense would be placed directly in front of the curtain that shielded the Most Holy Place, where God’s Presence dwelled. God was painting a powerful picture of what our prayers look like in heaven.