124 - Bets El Ale and Oho Lee Av

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Have you ever been seized with a great enthusiasm for a project? Oh, frequently, and then I start shopping and I heap up materials and I gather all my stuff and I'm just so excited to get started, I can't think about anything else.

And then you dive in? Every day. Yeah, well, today we dive into one of the biggest projects in the entire Bible, the tabernacle. Join us today on More Than Ink. Hey, we are back. This is Jim.

And this is Dorothy. And this is More Than Ink, and we are celebrating reading God's Word together, and we're in Exodus. We're actually coming down to the end of Exodus. It's time for action in building the tabernacle, right? It's time to actually build it, right?

We're going to build it, finally. It's almost an exact repetition of the instructions that were given five chapters earlier. That's right. Which is fascinating to me, right, why all of this exact repetition, and in between, is the episode with the golden calf.

Golden calf, all those bad distractions. It's an interesting structure in the book. Yeah, like if you want to actually go back and read the instructions on the specs, I think they're back around chapter 26. Yeah, it starts at 26 and goes forward. So you can check and see if they're doing it right.

You can go back and check the spec yourself. And they are doing it right. Yeah, they are. That's what struck me. They're doing it exactly right.

That's right. So let's build something. Well, you know, remember, too, that when God had given Moses the instructions, it seemed like a daunting craftsmanship problem. Like, how are these slaves who just came out of Egypt, how are they going to put together something this elaborate?

And God not only supernaturally gives them the design of the tabernacle, but he supernaturally invests in a couple of fellows who can be like foremen and teachers to make sure it gets done right. And it's interesting that we have their specific names repeated, right? They first show up by name back in chapter 31. Right, right. And the words are the same. The Lord says, I called these guys by name. By name.

For this specific task. Yeah. And we'll talk about that more in a minute after we read the passage. Yeah, exactly. But it's probably helpful to remember that a couple of weeks ago when we were in the early part of chapter 35, Moses finished what he said when he came down the mountain by saying, here's what the Lord commanded you to do, rest on the Sabbath. Yes. That's at the beginning of chapter 35.

Before they got all active. And I wonder now if that's in preparation for this monumental task because you know when you've got a bug to do a big task and something very creative that you just start and you don't stop. And you're thinking about it.

Put your head down. And you work on it every single day. Right, right. So he just emphasizes the importance of resting on the Sabbath. This is God's work. Yeah. Something God is building.

You must observe the Sabbath. Well, especially since, as we saw last time we were together, you know, they contribute all these materials. Right.

And even laborers. And they're very enthusiastic. Right. So what you're saying. They're ready to go.

Might be the deal. They are so enthusiastic. God said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. Don't forget the Sabbath. You do need to take a break. Well, we're going to see that in this chapter that they give so much that the workmen are like, they're overwhelmed. We got to stop. Well, let's build a tabernacle. So we're in the middle of chapter 35 and we're starting in verse 30 today.

So take us off. What do you say? Then Moses said to the people of Israel, see, the Lord has called by name Bezalel, the son of Uri, the son of her, of the tribe of Judah. And he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, in carving wood for work in every skilled craft. And he has inspired him to teach both him and Oholiab, the son of Ahisamak of the tribe of Dan. He's filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen or by a weaver or by any sort of workman or skilled designer. Yeah, these guys have a lot of skills. Look at the variety of understanding that they have. So let's talk about that for a minute. Yeah.

Lots of things here to talk about. I noticed that when I rolled back to verse 31. So he's filled them with what? Number one, the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of God. Number two, with skill. Number three, with intelligence. Number four, with knowledge. Number five, with craftsmanship. And then after that in verse 32, he delineates craftsmanship in what? Right.

Well, you know, artistic designs, gold, silver, bronze, cutting stones. I mean, it's really, it's elaborate. It's really something.

It's this tremendous variety of activity and productivity. Yeah. And these are the two guys that oversaw it.

So I don't know where you're going with this at the moment. But I was, on this reading anyway, it struck me that since these men are called by name by the Lord, and they had been since before the incident of the golden calf. Yeah, yeah. I looked up their names. Yep.

What they mean? Because names are significant. Oh, yeah.

Did you do that? I did too. His name's pronounced Betzalel. I like that, Betzalel. Right. Right. It's something about out of the smoke or out of the cloud. In the shadow of God. Oh, that's right. In the shadow of God or under the protection of God.

Under the protection. Yep. That's Betzalel. And Aholiab.

I didn't look up him. Aholiab. This is wonderful. Father's tent. Oh. Isn't that interesting? Father's tent. So you put these two guys together, their names that the leader is in the shadow of God and the accompanied guy is in the Father's tent.

That's pretty nice. They together are gonna lead the people under God's guidance to create, to make the tent where God's gonna dwell. I just kind of stopped there. I thought, oh, that's amazing. If I had not looked up those names, I would not have been so blessed by that.

Yeah, exactly. But then also I was struck by the way the Lord introduces Betzalel. He says, called him by name, the son of Uri, the son of her, of the tribe of Judah. I thought, oh, the son of somebody, the son of somebody out of the tribe of Judah and filled him with the Spirit. I thought, oh, that sounds a whole lot like Messiah. Yeah.

Right? The son out of the tribe of Judah filled with the Spirit of God. And it set me thinking of the beginning of Isaiah 11 where it says, a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse and a branch from his roots will bear fruit and the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. Here it comes, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Isn't that interesting? Now, I'm not saying these guys are types of Messiah, but I find that a fascinating parallel. But it should be true that the key people, let's say, that God uses for his kingdom and for his glory will have his Spirit and will be divinely empowered and strengthened to do that. And they're building God's house. Well, that is an idea that runs all the way through scripture.

Begins with the tabernacle here and runs all the way through revelation. So it makes sense. God wouldn't just say, here's the spec, good luck doing it.

Here's the plan. But I've also given you guys, that's a great encouragement too, when God does lead us in our life and his will is made known, it can be extraordinarily specific. He does not have to be vague. And here he's not vague and in places where the actual instruction and the design is vague, these guys fill in the cracks because God has empowered them. So I think when they saw the instructions, they got more detail about the specifics on how to do it because of the Spirit was in them. I mean, they could interpret that well.

Right. And there's this idea at the end of verse 35 about any sort of workman or skilled designer, that skilled designer is a maker of design, someone who in their mind is creative in design. So for instance, he said you need to put pictures of cherubim without really giving them photographs. Well, and it's interesting because cherubim appear across the ancient world. They do.

And so there are some common characteristics of cherubim, but how did they know exactly? But that artistic interpretation to these guys, God's inspired them to do that. I think it's also noteworthy, not only did God give them the skills, but when you look in verse 34, he inspired them to teach. Right. That's super important. So they weren't doing this all by themselves.

They needed to show other people how to do that. And that's a great picture of what happens in the body of Christ to this day. It is. And that set me thinking of 1 Corinthians 12. So let me read that to you. You probably went down this same track.

Go for it. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 verse 4, now there are varieties of gifts about the same spirit. You could be talking about this passage. Yeah. And there are varieties of ministries or services and the same Lord and varieties of effects or outcomes, but the same God who works all things in all persons, but to each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. For the common good.

For one thing. Yeah. Yeah. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the spirit, to another the word of knowledge according to the same spirit.

So he's just tracking down what we're being told here in Exodus. This variety of gifts, variety of skills, all aimed toward the common good, toward the one. Right. Distributed by the spirit just as he will. Yeah.

Yeah. And he says also in Ephesians 4, he says, every joint which is equipped when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. So the same kind of common theme of the contribution of many hands, but by God's design and by God's inspiration to those people. So when you get to the end of this section before we start chapter 36, he says, so by any sort of workman, any skilled designer, these guys are on top of it and they'll instruct you and teach you how to do it, thus kind of expanding their reach into getting this thing done because it's not a one man job.

Because they together have been entrusted under the shadow of God to build the Father's tent. I just love that picture. That's nice. I should have looked up a holier. I feel bad now. Well, as soon as I saw it, I thought, oh, Ab, that's Father, right? That's Abraham.

Abraham. So yeah, I thought, oh, I should have been able to figure that out. Yeah. Yeah, that's okay. Well, let's go into chapter 36. Let's make something. Okay. So we're starting. I'll take us off there. Verse one in chapter 36.

Betzal-El, I just love that name, Betzal-El and Ahol-Yav. And every craftsman in whom the Lord has put skill and intelligence to know how to do any work in the construction of the sanctuary shall work in accordance with all that the Lord has commanded. That's an interesting expansion. Let's make a comment there. Yeah.

That's an interesting expansion. It's not just Betzal-El and Ahol-Yav who've got some skills from God. Well, no, the skill is the ability to do it, right? The skill can be learned with the intelligence, the understanding. To know how. It comes before the skill, right? The skill is the application of the understanding. But it struck me that it says, God's given him the skill and the intelligence, but they shall work in accordance with what the Lord has commanded. It implies there is an option.

They can use that skill and intelligence to do their own thing. Oh, sure. Right? But he says now, you make sure that you align yourselves with what you're doing and everything that the Lord has said.

Do it the way I said. Yeah. Yeah. I always wondered when I read that verse too, whether or not they would have slipped into doing it the Egyptian way, because it could very well be they had these skills in Egypt. You know, as slaves, they could have been skilled slaves and they could have slipped into doing an Egyptian-style tabernacle.

Like, well, or what happened with the golden calf. Yeah, exactly. We know what this God looks like. So he's just saying, you guys are skilled, and you've got knowledge, but let's make sure it's according to what I've commanded. So here we go, verse two.

So Moses called Beit Se'el and every craftsman in whose mind the Lord had put skill. There it is again. Again?

Yeah. Everyone whose heart stirred him. Ah, every heart whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work.

I'll just stop there. Remember, in the last chapter when God said, you know, contribute your stuff, contribute your labors, so many times, I had to go back and count, it was like four times in chapter 35 that God mentioned. This was their heart being moved this way. Right.

And so here they are again. These are people who are just genuinely in the project. Their heart was lifted up is what it really means, and come to do the work. So verse three. And they received from Moses all the contribution that the people of Israel had brought for doing the work on the sanctuary.

I just talked about that from last chapter. And they still kept bringing him freewill offerings every morning so that all the craftsmen who were doing every sort of task in the sanctuary came, each from the task that he was doing, and said to Moses, hey, the people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded us to do. So Moses gave command, and word was proclaimed throughout the camp, let no man or woman do anything more for the contribution of the sanctuary.

So the people were restrained from bringing, for the material they had was sufficient to do all the work and more. Wow. Isn't that amazing?

It really is. If you look back to the episode with the golden calf, it said they took off their earrings and their jewelry. Right. Right?

So it was a little chunk of gold from everybody. Yeah. But this is this massive outpouring, because I think they have, it's been communicated to them and they've grasped it that this is a wholly different undertaking than just creating a golden idol to worship.

Yeah. This is an outpouring. This is just tremendous. And to such a degree that's a problem, the craftsmen were saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, Moses, tell people that's good enough. You can get this picture of that the people were bringing stuff and stacking it so much that the people, the workers couldn't even do their work, because they were constantly having to move a pile of something somebody just brought. Well, and also the fact that they're probably good estimators about how much material they need. They're making stuff, and they're making it at a certain pace, but then the stuff's coming in faster than they're making.

Right. They're saying, I think we got enough. This is plenty right here.

Plenty and more. And it made me think of that woman who brought the alabaster of ask to Jesus and poured out that expensive ointment on his feet, and of course all the apostles were looking and saying, why this waste? This is too much.

Oh, yeah, why this waste. But I bring that up because when it comes to worshiping God, when it comes to responding to his call, like the woman in the alabaster of ask and the Egyptians right here, it turns out that they're enthusiastic, and so they give, and they give, and they give. And what a contrast that is to where we talked about last time about putting up the giving thermometer, kind of coercing people to give, oh, we don't quite have enough. We need to do more. We'll go far.

We have to go. Yeah. Well, it kind of tells you people's heart isn't really in it. In this case, their hearts are truly in it. Their hearts are lifted up. They're willing to do this. And the result isn't scant offerings.

It's more than enough. And that happened with Paul, too. Remember, he asked for an offering? I was thinking that same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And he basically said, I think he was reflecting this, I think it was in Philippians.

It's to the Philippians. Yeah. He goes, I have everything in full. Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks for contributing. And I got more than enough. I have more than enough.

We're good. Yeah. So hearts that are willing give a lot.

They're very responsive. And that's what we're seeing that's going on here. He says, restrain them from giving, Moses. I think we got enough. Mm-hmm. So, okay. So we got the materials.

Let's make something. So in verse eight, we start kind of the construction process for real that goes all the way to the end of Exodus. And this is the interesting part where the duplication occurs, right? Yeah. Because now you can almost track word for word back to earlier, the instruction in the book.

Exactly. And I think that's important because that was the instruction. And here's the actual carrying out.

Let's do it. Exactly what they had been told. So let me pick it up at verse eight. Verse eight. The craftsman among the workmen made the tabernacle with 10 curtains. They were made of fine twined linen, blue and purple and scarlet yarns with cherubims skillfully worked. The length of each curtain was 28 cubits and the breadth of each curtain four cubits and all the curtains were the same size. He coupled five curtains to one another and the other five curtains he coupled to one another. He made loops of blue on the edge of the outermost curtain of the first set. Likewise, he made them on the edge of the outermost curtain of the second set. He made 50 loops on the one curtain and 50 loops on the edge of the curtain that was in the second set. The loops were opposite one another and he made 50 clasps of gold and coupled the curtains to one another with clasps. So the whole tabernacle was a single hole.

A single hole. So we're making a giant piece of cloth here, a giant covering is what we're doing. So it's interesting that in the earlier instructions, and maybe we'll talk about this more next week, the earlier instructions when they were talking about the receiving for the information for the tabernacle started from the inside out. Remember, it started with the arc.

It started with the arc, yeah. And the table of showbread and the lampstand. Here we're starting the actual construction from the outside in. So as they're actually building it, they're setting the thing up so they can see the dimensions.

Yeah, yeah. It sort of makes sense too because if you make the arc first, where are you going to put it? You should put it inside the tabernacle. So we're making the tabernacle first.

And how long did it take them? You know, the educated estimates are six months to complete this thing. This is a gigantic piece.

A huge task. Yeah. So if you made the arc first, it was going to sit out exposed or hidden in somebody's tent.

Right, right. And you know, if you forgot, and so we're making 10 curtains. And they're making it on a loom that's six feet wide, okay? And they're going to run this loom six feet wide. And how long are they going to run the fabric through it?

Forty-two feet. And that's one strip. And you've got to make 10 of those. Well, that's like a bolt of fabric. That's like a bolt of fabric. And then you got to take those 10 pieces and tie them together. So you get kind of like one big piece.

And that's the big, it's like a gigantic tarp that's going to cover the entire place. It's really astonishing. It's really interesting. But you know, that's why there's this emphasis on the clasps and the loops, because you had to take it apart. So the parts would be carryable by a single person or a pair of people. So you know, to actually construct this thing in human size proportions, that was going to create this very large enclosure.

It's just so interesting. Yeah, because this has to be portable. Every tent has to be portable, and they're going to move with this. And so yeah, it's got to be, it's got to be dismantleable. But as they're making it, they're putting it together. I was struck by the repetition of that idea. They made it and they coupled it. They made it and they connected it. It's like they stood it up so they could see it and check their work and see what see the shape of the thing coming together and then and so it was a single hole.

Yeah, that's an interesting emphasis because that comes back many times. The tabernacle isn't a bunch of pieces put together, right? In a real sense. It's a single hole. It's a one thing, because we're told that it was they were all the same size.

Yeah, there were all these different so they were all the same size but put together to create one large one or something. Right. Right.

Yeah. And if you're if you're a person who buys fabric, and I am Yeah, way too much fabric. This is all together this one hole is 280 square yards.

Oh my soul. 280. That's a lot of fabric. So or if you if you're going to make it a square, it's about 50 feet by 50 feet. So it's a lot. It's a lot of fabric.

So this they did make this overnight. And in fact, if you set up a six foot wide loom and just start that baby running, it's going to take a while. And you have to also put all the artistic stuff into it, you have to design the artistic stuff. Yeah, and these days looms are electric. But right, you know, in in those days, they were running a shuttle and pounding the thread by hand with this very intricate design. So this was not a fast process. Thread by thing.

Now you know how big a thread is thread by thread into the length of all of the you're going to do is over 400 feet of fabric thread by thread by thread. So this took a while. This took a while.

Yeah, I looked into that a little bit and all the estimates that I found are somewhere between four to seven months. Yeah. Yeah, it would take a while and yeah, and of course the decorations have to come first how you're going to write the design is the designs a big deal. Yeah. So, so that's what it is. So this is one of actually three layers of covering. Okay.

Yep. And then we move to the next layer of covering in verse 14. So in verse 14, he made the curtains of goats hair for a tent over the tabernacle. And he made 11 curtains, the length of each curtain was 30 cubits and the breadth of each curtain four cubits, the 11 curtains were the same size. He coupled five curtains by themselves and six curtains by themselves. And he made 50 loops on the edge of the outermost curtain of the one set and 50 loops on the edge of the other connecting curtain, and he made 50 clasps of bronze to couple the tent together that it might be a single hole.

A single hole. And he made for the tent a covering of tanned ramskins and goatskins. So there's the third layer. There's the third layer. So this is the layers as you move up to the total roof, which is those ramskins and the goatskins.

Yeah. So, and you notice this one's a little bit bigger, which would make sense because if it's the next layer up, it's got to be a little bit bigger. And if you've forgotten the tabernacle proper, it's dimensions, it was 10 cubits tall, okay.

And it was 10 cubits wide and 30 long. So you have to have enough of a single hole fabric that you can drape over a frame, and it'll cover all the sides. And if you're a math kind of person, you can figure it out. It covers quite well.

I mean, it's not exactly the outside. It's much more by about 20%. So it works really well. It's a good calculation, and you should be able to cover the frame. So in the end, you get a room that's 10 cubits wide and 30 cubits long and 10 cubits tall. So that's pretty well, about 15 feet wide, 15 feet tall. So this works, works really nicely. So this is the specification we're building, started in chapter 26, goes all the way through chapter 31.

And we've started the build, and we're also coming down a little short on time. Do you have some kind of closing thing you're turning to right there? I was just thinking about this emphasis on it being connected together into a single hole.

A single hole, yeah. And I think we'll probably talk about this more next week. I am currently just studying John 17 in another context, and I'm thinking a lot about Jesus' prayer that they may all be one.

Be one. Right? That you, Father, are in me, and I in them, and they in us, that we may all be one. And I believe that there's a connection here to all these individual parts being connected together in the holiness of unity in God into a single hole, a dwelling place of God in the Spirit, as Paul says in a couple of his letters. So that's kind of where I'm lingering, I think, with this emphasis on all the pieces being knitted together into a single hole.

Yeah, yeah, into this one thing. It also impresses me as well, God's capabilities, He could snap His fingers and make a tabernacle. Right. So why engage the people? Why engage the people in such depth with the gifts that He's gone to the trouble of investing in them and all that kind of stuff?

And I think that's sort of it. I think when this is done, and then later when the permanent version, the temple is made with stones, they could look at that and they say, in some way, God's desire to live among us, He used us, He incorporated us into making this one hole. In some way, we are part of this hole, and God deliberately, by His plan, wants us to be part of this hole. It's still not thousands of contributions, it's still the one hole, but we had a hand in it. We had a hand in it.

Right, right. Well, and Peter says in chapter two of 1 Peter, coming to Him as a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So the living stones, that speaks of interaction of the various parts of the body working together, as you quoted from Ephesians 4. And of course, He's connecting to the stones that built the temple, which is the hard version of this. But there is this interconnectedness, this mutual support, it's a very active idea of being built together. So this place that God chooses to be among His people, it involves many hands and many people in it. So you can almost say, and this is what Paul used many times, working as one, coming to the one thing, which is the presence of God in our midst, and He includes us almost not just in the building of it, but it's the building itself. I think we can talk more about this. Yeah, that is a beautiful picture.

Yeah, it's just a cool picture, and Paul develops an awful lot. And so that's why as we're actually finishing Exodus and we're talking about building it, we have to talk about what God's trying to tell us and the way that we're building it and how He involves people and how He gifts people. So we are out of time. Next time, we're going to come back, we're going to continue building. I think we're done with all the fabric and we're going to start building a frame next time to drape the fabric over it. So we want you to be part of that.

It's a great thing. It's a great adventure as they actually make the tabernacles, so come back and join us next time for More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Yeah, we'll see that. Something like that. We'll see you next time.