God’s Worship Tent (Exodus 31:12–18)

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.

Taken from NIV Discover God’s Heart Devotional Bible

The Gain of Serving God

“They will become his slaves so that they may learn the difference between my service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.” (2 Chronicles 12:8)

Serving God is utterly different from serving anyone else.

God is extremely jealous that we understand this — and enjoy it. For example, he commands us, “Serve the Lord with gladness!” (Psalm 100:2). There is a reason for this gladness. It is given in Acts 17:25, “God is not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.”

We serve him with gladness because we do not bear the burden of meeting his needs. Rather we rejoice in a service where he meets our needs. Serving God always means receiving grace from God.

To show how jealous God is for us to get this and glory in it, there is a story in 2 Chronicles 12. Rehoboam, the Son of Solomon, who ruled the southern kingdom after the revolt of the ten tribes, “forsook the law of the Lord” (12:1). He chose against serving the Lord and gave his service to other gods and other kingdoms. As judgment God sent Shishak, the king of Egypt, against Rehoboam with 1,200 chariots and 60,000 horsemen (12:3).

In mercy God sent the prophet Shemaiah to Rehoboam with this message: “Thus says the Lord, you abandoned me, so I have abandoned you to the hand of Shishak” (12:5). The happy upshot of that message is that Rehoboam and his princes humbled themselves in repentance and said, “The Lord is righteous” (12:6).

When the Lord saw that they humbled themselves, he said, “They have humbled themselves, so I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some deliverance, and my wrath shall not be poured out on Jerusalem by means of Shishak” (12:7). But as a discipline to them he says, “They will become his slaves so that they may learn the difference between my service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries” (12:8).

The point is plain: serving God is a receiving and a blessing and a joy and a benefit.

This is why I am so jealous to say that the worship of Sunday morning and the worship of daily obedience is not at bottom a burdensome giving to God but a joyful getting from God.

The Lords’ Day (Exodus 20:8–11)

A Time for Rest and Worship

The Sabbath—which means “rest”—is the seventh day of the Hebrew week (Ge 2:2–3). The Israelites were commanded to keep this day as a holy day of rest, reflection and recreation in honor of the Lord (Ex 20:8–11).

The Sabbath served to remind the Israelites of their identity as God’s covenant people and of their deliverance from Egypt (Ex 31:12–17; Dt 5:15; Isa 58:13–14). It was a day that offered refreshment from work, both spiritually and physically (Ex 23:10–12). Traditionally, Jews spend three days each week in eager anticipation of the Sabbath, then after it has passed, three days reflecting on its joy. The Old Testament has very sharp reminders to keep the Sabbath day (Isa 56:2; Jer 17:19–27; Eze 44:24), as well as harsh punishment for a person who broke the Sabbath (Nu 15:32–36).

The Lord’s Day, by comparison, was considered to be the “first day” of the week. A sign of the new beginning marked by the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb, the Lord’s Day quickly became the day on which the early church met for weekly worship (Ac 20:7; 1Co 16:2). Yet rest remains an important part of the Lord’s Day.

The Lord’s Day is not to be filled with legalism, for that is what Christ frequently rebuked in his day. It should be the joyful focal point of the week, a day eagerly anticipated by the believer. We should approach it physically rested and attitudinally ready for the Lord to reveal himself to us (Ps 118:24).

Taken from The Woman’s Study Bible

Something to Boast About

For by grace you have been saved through faith. (Ephesians 2:8)

The New Testament correlates faith and grace to make sure that we do not boast in what grace alone achieves.

One of the most familiar examples goes like this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). By grace, through faith. There’s the correlation that guards the freedom of grace.

Faith is the act of our soul that turns away from our own insufficiency to the free and all-sufficient resources of God. Faith focuses on the freedom of God to dispense grace to the unworthy. It banks on the bounty of God.

Therefore faith, by its very nature, nullifies boasting and fits with grace. Wherever faith looks, it sees grace behind every praiseworthy act. So it cannot boast, except in the Lord.

So Paul, after saying that salvation is by grace through faith, says, “And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Faith cannot boast in human goodness or competence or wisdom, because faith focuses on the free, all-supplying grace of God. Whatever goodness faith sees, it sees as the fruit of grace.

When it looks at our “wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,” it says, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30–31).

Friends – The Family We Choose (Psalm 68:6)

Many of us were blessed to be born into a loving, caring family; some of us were not so fortunate. But there is a family into which we can be

reborn

—the family of God (see John 1:12). And God is delighted to “[set] the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6).

I love my earthly family. I was born into a Christian home and have known God all my life. As I grew up, my family separated to different parts of the United States to raise their own families, and I stayed close to where I was born. Do I miss day-to-day activities with members of my birth family? Absolutely!

But I have others nearby who have become part of my circle of friends. I found these wonderful, dear friends in the family of God where I worship. We share faith in God, as well as similar likes and dislikes, goals and aspirations. I have reached out to share my life with these friends, and together our friendships have formed a chosen family—a family in which trust, caring, love and acceptance have flourished, just as in my birth family.

I believe God smiles on us as we work and play together. Laugh and cry together. Strive and thrive together. We are his family, his friends. We belong to him and to one another as we live as friends and “family.” I am so happy we are his friends—his chosen family.

Charlotte Greeson

Taken from NIV Fulfilled

When God Goes Against His Will

But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death. (1 Samuel 2:25)

There are three implications of this text for our lives.

1) It is possible to sin so long and so grievously that the Lord will not grant repentance.

That is why Paul said that after all our pleading and teaching, “God may grant them repentance” — not, “will grant them repentance” (2 Timothy 2:25). There is a “too late” in the life of sin. As it says of Esau in Hebrews 12:17, “He found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.” He was forsaken; he could not repent.

This does not mean that those who truly repent even after a whole lifetime of sinning cannot be saved. They certainly can be, and will be! God is staggeringly merciful. Witness the thief on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

2) God may not permit a sinning person to do what is right.

“But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death.” Listening to the voice of their father was the right thing to do. But they would not. Why? “For the Lord desired to put them to death.”

The reason given for why they did not obey their father was that God had other purposes for them, and had given them up to sinning and death. This shows that there are times when the will of God’s decree is different from the revealed will of God’s command.

3) Sometimes our prayers for God’s revealed will to be done will not be done because God has decreed something different for holy and wise purposes.

I suppose that Eli prayed for his sons to be changed. That is how he should have prayed. But God had decreed that Hophni and Phinehas not obey, but rather be slain.

When something like this happens (which we do not ordinarily know ahead of time) while we are crying out to God for change, the answer of God is not: “I don’t love you.” Rather the answer is: “I have wise and holy purposes in not overcoming this sin and not granting repentance. You do not see these purposes now. Trust me. I know what I am doing. I love you.”

When Does Worship Become Insincere Ritual? (Zechariah 7:5–6)

Traditions have great value because they preserve the values and teachings of the past. They remind us of things we might otherwise forget. While living in a foreign land, surrounded by a foreign culture and language, the Jews could have easily forgotten the important events of their history. Future generations could have missed out on how significantly God had dealt with their ancestors. But the Jews used rituals and traditions to avoid historical ignorance. They commemorated the past so they would not forget the lessons learned.

Unfortunately, the rituals “fossilized” over time. People drifted into celebrating the form but forgetting the reality behind it. Their fasting appeared meaningful but had no inner substance. When this or something similar happens, a worship activity becomes an empty ritual or, even worse, a ritual with the wrong meaning attached to it. Often this can occur as a slow erosion of values—a process that eventually destroys the good others intended.

Taken from NIV Essentials Study Bible

The Payout for Patience

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.” (Genesis 50:20)

The story of Joseph in Genesis 37–50 is a great lesson in why we should have faith in the sovereign future grace of God.

Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, which must have tested his patience tremendously. But he is given a good job in Potiphar’s household. Then, when he is acting uprightly in the unplanned place of obedience, Potiphar’s wife lies about his integrity and has him thrown into prison — another great trial to his patience.

But again things turn for the better, and the prison-keeper gives him responsibility and respect. But just when he thinks he is about to get a reprieve from the Pharaoh’s cupbearer, whose dream he interpreted, the cupbearer forgets him for two more years.

Finally, the meaning of all these detours and delays becomes clear. Joseph says to his long-estranged brothers, “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. . . . As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive” (Genesis 45:7; 50:20).

What would have been the key to patience for Joseph during all those long years of exile and abuse? The answer is: faith in future grace — the sovereign grace of God to turn the unplanned place and the unplanned pace into the happiest ending imaginable.

God Blesses You When You Worship (Luke 10:42)

How easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking that God is mostly interested in our spiritual activity. Helping this person, serving on that committee, leading a Bible study, assisting with another church project. All of these things may be important, but God wants us to be with him more than he wants us to do things for him.

When Jesus showed up at her door, Martha rushed into the kitchen and began frantically to whip up a world-class feast. Mary stopped everything she was doing and parked herself in the living room at the feet of Jesus. She lingered in his presence, listening to him, enjoying him, adoring him. When Martha got irritated at her sister, Jesus gently rebuked Martha. He then praised Mary for her priorities.

What about you? Is your tendency to work first or worship first? According to Jesus, your top concern should be to focus on him. When you do, you find a blessing that will never be taken away.

God’s Promise to Me

• I will bless those who love me and worship me.

My Prayer to God

Christ Jesus, you hold Mary up as a model of following you. O Lord, our task-oriented world tends to view “get it done” people like Martha in highest regard. And sometimes I buy into this kind of thinking—that spiritual busyness is next to godliness. The top priority you want to see in each of your people is a heart that loves you and longs to be with you. Change me, Lord.

Taken from Once a Day Bible Promises

Authentic vs. Phony Faith

Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await him. (Hebrews 9:28)

The question before us all is: Are we included in the “many” whose sins he bore? And will we be saved by his coming “for salvation”?

The answer of Hebrews 9:28 is, “Yes,” if we are “eagerly awaiting him.” We can know that our sins are taken away and that we will be safe in the judgment if we trust Christ in such a way that it makes us eager for his coming.

There is a phony faith that claims to believe in Christ, but is only a fire insurance policy. Phony faith “believes” only to escape hell. It has no real desire for Christ. In fact, it would prefer it if he did not come, so that we can have as much of this world’s pleasures as possible. This shows that a heart is not with Christ, but with the world.

So the issue for us is: Do we eagerly long for the coming of Christ? Or do we want him to wait while our love affair with the world runs its course? That is the question that tests the authenticity of faith.

So let us be like the Corinthians who were “awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:7), and like the Philippians whose “citizenship was in heaven, from which also [they] eagerly waited for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).

That’s the issue for us. Do we love his appearing? Or do we love the world and hope that his appearing will not interrupt our worldly plans? Eternity hangs on this question.

Streams in the Desert – May 28

Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” “I will not let you go,” Jacob replied, “unless you bless me.” Then Jacob asked, “Please tell me your name.” “Why do you ask my name?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there. (Gen 32:26,29)

Jacob got the victory and the blessing not by wrestling, but by clinging. His limb was out of joint and he could struggle no longer, but he would not let go. Unable to wrestle, he wound his arms around the neck of his mysterious antagonist and hung all his helpless weight upon him, until at last he conquered.

We will not get victory in prayer until we too cease our struggling, giving up our own will and throw our arms about our Father’s neck in clinging faith.

What can puny human strength take by force out of the hand of Omnipotence? Can we wrest blessing by force from God? It is never the violence of wilfulness that prevails with God. It is the might of clinging faith, that gets the blessing and the victories. It is not when we press and urge our own will, but when humility and trust unite in saying, “Not my will, but Thine.” We are strong with God only in the degree that self is conquered and is dead. Not by wrestling, but by clinging can we get the blessing.
—J. R. Miller

An incident from the prayer life of Charles H. Usher (illustrating “soul-cling” as a hindrance to prevailing prayer): “My little boy was very ill. The doctors held out little hope of his recovery. I had used all the knowledge of prayer which I possessed on his behalf, but he got worse and worse. This went on for several weeks.

“One day I stood watching him as he lay in his cot, and I saw that he could not live long unless he had a turn for the better. I said to God, ’O God, I have given much time in prayer for my boy and he gets no better; I must now leave him to Thee, and I will give myself to prayer for others. If it is Thy will to take him, I choose Thy will—I surrender him entirely to Thee.’

“I called in my dear wife, and told her what I had done. She shed some tears, but handed him over to God. Two days afterwards a man of God came to see us. He had been very interested in our boy Frank, and had been much in prayer for him.

“He said, ’God has given me faith to believe that he will recover—have you faith?’

“I said, ’I have surrendered him to God, but I will go again to God regarding him.’ I did; and in prayer I discovered that I had faith for his recovery. From that time he began to get better. It was the ’soul-cling’ in my prayers which had hindered God answering; and if I had continued to cling and had been unwilling to surrender him, I doubt if my boy would be with me today.

“Child of God! If you want God to answer your prayers, you must be prepared to follow the footsteps of ’our father Abraham,’ even to the Mount of Sacrifice.” (See Rom. 4:12.)

Job 4:1-21

Job has lost everything and is in despair. His three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, come to him and sit with him in silence for seven days (Job 2:11-13). But then they speak. Here Eliphaz offers his perspective.

Just Deserts

Read

“Stop and think! Do the innocent die? When have the upright been destroyed? My experience shows that those who plant trouble and cultivate evil will harvest the same.”
(Job 4:7-8)

Reflect

Although God later rebuked Eliphaz for being wrong in his advice to Job (Job 42:7), not all Eliphaz said was in error. It is true that those who promote sin and trouble will eventually be punished. It is false that anyone who is good and innocent will never suffer.

Although Eliphaz had many good and true comments, he made three wrong assumptions: A good and innocent person never suffers; those who suffer are being punished for their past sins; and Job, because he was suffering, had done something wrong in God’s eyes.

Respond

What about you? Do you assume that everyone gets what they deserve? Do you see other people’s suffering and wonder what they did to deserve it? Do you experience your own suffering and wonder what God is punishing you for?

Be careful in assigning blame when you see someone suffering or when you experience it in your own life. We can come up with explanations as Eliphaz did, but maybe God has something he wants to do in us or through us.

Deuteronomy 24:14–15

God wants employers to not only be fair but also to be compassionate, not coldhearted. The practice of paying wages each day ensured that the poor, who lived literally hand to mouth, would not be hungry while waiting for their pay.

Do you own a business? What a wonderful reputation you could achieve if your business would treat all employees with dignity and fairness and pay all its bills on time!

Taken from NIV The Journey Bible

God’s Design in Detours

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17)

Have you ever wondered what God is doing while you are looking in the wrong place for something you lost and needed very badly? He knows exactly where it is, and he is letting you look in the wrong place.

I once needed a quote for a new edition of my book Desiring God. I knew I had read it in Richard Wurmbrand. I thought it was in his devotional book, Reaching Toward the Heights. I could almost see it on the right hand side of the facing pages. But I couldn’t find it.

But while I was looking, I was riveted on one page, the devotional for November 30. As I read it, I said, “This is one of the reasons I have had to keep looking for my quote.” Here was a story, not for me, but for parents of broken children.

Having broken children is like looking in the wrong place for what you have lost and cannot find. Why? Why? Why? This was the unplanned reward of “wasted” moments.

In a home for retarded children, Catherine was nurtured twenty years. The child had been [mentally handicapped] from the beginning and had never spoken a word, but only vegetated. She either gazed quietly at the walls or made distorted movements. To eat, to drink, to sleep, were her whole life. She seemed not to participate at all in what happened around her. A leg had to be amputated. The staff wished Cathy well and hoped that the Lord would soon take her to Himself.

One day the doctor called the director to come quickly. Catherine was dying. When both entered the room, they could not believe their senses. Catherine was singing Christian hymns she had heard and had picked up, just those suitable for death beds. She repeated over and over again the German song, “Where does the soul find its fatherland, its rest?” She sang for half an hour with transfigured face, then she passed away quietly. (Taken from The Best Is Still to Come, Wuppertal: Sonne und Shild)

Is anything that is done in the name of Christ really wasted?

My frustrated, futile search for what I thought I needed was not wasted. Singing to this disabled child was not wasted. And your agonizing, unplanned detour is not a waste — not if you look to the Lord for his unexpected work, and do what you must do in his name (Colossians 3:17). The Lord works for those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:4).

Our True Vocation (Proverbs 1:1–7)

Everybody has a vocation to some form of life work. But behind that and deeper than that, everybody has a vocation to be a person, to be fully and deeply a human being, to be Christlike. And the second thing is more important than the first. It is more important to be a great person than a great teacher, butcher or candlestick maker.

Taken from NIV Ragamuffin Bible

Is Christ Worth It?

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–27)

Jesus is unashamed and unafraid of telling us up front the “worst” — the painful cost of being a Christian: hating family (v. 26), carrying a cross (v. 27), renouncing possessions (v. 33). There is no small print in the covenant of grace. It is all big, and bold. No cheap grace! Very costly! Come, and be my disciple.

But Satan hides his worst and shows only his best. All that really matters in the deal with Satan is in small print on the back page.

On the front page in big, bold letters are the words, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4), and “All these things I will give to you, if you fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). But on the back page in small print — so small you can only read it with the magnifying glass of the Bible — it says: “And after the fleeting pleasures, you will suffer with me forever in hell.”

Why is Jesus willing to show us his “worst” as well as his best, while Satan will only show us his best? Matthew Henry answers, “Satan shows the best, but hides the worst, because his best will not [counterbalance] his worst; but Christ’s will abundantly.”

The call of Jesus is not just a call to suffering and self–denial; it is first a call to a banquet. This is the point of the parable in Luke 14:16–24. Jesus also promises a glorious resurrection where all the losses of this life will be repaid (Luke 14:14). He also tells us that he will help us endure the hardships (Luke 22:32). He also tells us he will give us the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13). He promises that even if we are killed for the kingdom, “not a hair of your head will perish” (Luke 21:18).

Which means that when we sit down to calculate the cost of following Jesus — when we weigh the “worst” and the “best” — he is worth it. Abundantly worth it (see Romans 8:18).

Not so with Satan. Stolen bread is sweet, but afterward the mouth is full of gravel (see Proverbs 20:17).