Monday, April 2, 2012

The people were restrained


Exodus 36: 1-7, “Then wrought Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted man, in whom the LORD put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that the LORD had commanded. And Moses called Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted man, in whose heart the LORD had put wisdom, even every one whose heart stirred him up to come unto the work to do it: And they received of Moses all the offering, which the children of Israel had brought for the work of the service of the sanctuary, to make it withal. And they brought yet unto him free offerings every morning. And all the wise men, that wrought all the work of the sanctuary, came every man from his work which they made; And they spake unto Moses, saying, The people bring much more than enough for the service of the work, which the LORD commanded to make. And Moses gave commandment, and they caused it to be proclaimed throughout the camp, saying, Let neither man nor woman make any more work for the offering of the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing. For the stuff they had was sufficient for all the work to make it, and too much.”
The Lord asked Moses to build a Tabernacle so that Israel could be involved in ceremonial worship of the Lord. However, Moses was a leader and not a craftsman so he wasn’t in a position to the work personally. The Lord understood this, after all He said to Moses earlier, “Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.” (Ex 4: 11, 12) In this case Moses was too busy leading the people and communicating with the Lord to actually do make the Tabernacle, its items and the priestly clothing so the Lord raised up other men to do the job instead. Whenever there was an issue on this journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, the Lord always had a good solution and every problem was solved along the way. The Lord didn’t prevent that generation from experiencing the consequences of the choices they made, He just found a way to proceed with or without them. The people, at that stage, were so grateful to the Lord that He had to tell them to stop giving because they were giving more than was needed for the task.
(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)

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