#19 Joshua 6, verses 6 to 14 Following Joshua's humanly ridiculous orders in order to take Jericho. The lessons for us are significant. Join us. https://youtu.be/C977PxbIlyQ

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What you don't want to hear is: "Big Mistake. Big Mistake. Huge Mistake."

The Lampstand

                        

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Exodus 25:31-40: “Then you shall make a lampstand of pure gold. The lampstand and its base and its shaft are to be made of hammered work; its cups, its bulbs and its flowers shall be of one piece with it. Six branches shall go out from its sides; three branches of the lampstand from its one side and three branches of the lampstand from its other side. Three cups shall be shaped like almond blossoms in the one branch, a bulb and a flower, and three cups shaped like almond blossoms in the other branch, a bulb and a flower—so for six branches going out from the lampstand; and in the lampstand four cups shaped like almond blossoms, its bulbs and its flowers. A bulb shall be under the first pair of branches coming out of it, and a bulb under the second pair of branches coming out of it, and a bulb under the third pair of branches coming out of it, for the six branches coming out of the lampstand. Their bulbs and their branches shall be of one piece with it; all of it shall be one piece of hammered work of pure gold. Then you shall make its lamps seven in number; and they shall mount its lamps so as to shed light on the space in front of it. Its snuffers and their trays shall be of pure gold. It shall be made from a talent of pure gold, with all these utensils. See that you make them after the pattern for them, which was shown to you on the mountain.”

We come now to the third piece of furniture God wanted constructed by the people of Israel – a lampstand of pure gold. He gives them specific instructions that one reads in this passage.  There are a few special aspects we should point out. The text speaks of “bulbs” and one could well say, “Wait a minute, they didn’t have bulbs, as in light bulbs, in the day of Moses.” And one would be right. This lampstand would not even be lit with candles. Instead, the ‘cups’ that were shaped like almonds, but also looked like flowers, made of gold, were to be filled with oil and a wick placed in them, which would be lit.  But once lit, they were to remain lit, and so we imagine the wick and the oil would need replacing and replenishing often. David Guzik suggests the use of the almond blossom image is significant in that it is the first tree to blossom in the springtime. I draw from that the “children of Israel” were the first of God’s children and the real light (Jesus Christ) came to them first.

It would have six branches going out from it, three on each side, and the center post shall have four ornaments looking like flowers on it, likely spread out from the top to the bottom of the stand, the top one also used as a lamp along with the other six ornaments – so seven lamps (or lights) all together.

And if that’s not enough detailed instruction, God wants the flame in each of the seven lamps to be placed in such a way that each one sheds light on the space before it.  Accessory equipment like the snuffers and the trays they sit on are also to be made of pure gold.  Wow not even ladies of the southern aristocratic families of the last century had these many demands for anything they ordered for their fancy plantation homes. And God drives home His request by telling Moses to make sure that all these things are made in accordance to the pattern He gave to him on the mountain.  Our God is a demanding God.  But here’s the newsflash – He has every right to be.  And once again that is the hardest foundational hurdle of faith for us to overcome, and the rest comes easy. For those that are looking for a better (from a human perspective) explanation, Chuck Smith says God wanted it exactly the way He wanted it “because it has to be an exact thing if it’s going to be a model of the heavenly.” Then he points out that in Hebrews 8:5 we are told that that’s exactly what it is.

Remember this lampstand (along with the Ark and the ‘table of showbread’) was to be kept in the structure that God instructs His people to build next – the tent we call the Tabernacle. The lampstand was to be the light in the tent that would be completely covered and thus needed internal light, but Chuck Smith commentates, “it really was a symbol of God’s desire for the nation Israel to be the light of the world.”

Matthew Henry takes the symbolism one step further. Until the real Light (Jesus Christ) was to come to earth (for He already existed in the heavens), God was not left without witness of His existence. The lamp, to Henry, represented the commandments of God, and the lights of this lampstand the law.  The branches from the lamp were the prophets who gave light in their time throughout the Old Testament.

As interesting as all this symbolism is, I must remind myself that it is all symbolic and sometimes left to the interpretation of commentators.  However, what we should not ignore to any extent is God’s caution that He now has repeated twice and I believe does so again later in Scripture.  Simply put, it is “Follow the Instructions!”  Not, “If all else fails, follow the instructions!” But follow them the first time. Henry says, “Nothing was left to his (Moses’) own invention, or the fancy of the workmen, or the people’s humor; but the will of God must be religiously observed in every particular.”

And here’s why this is so significant according to Henry: “All God’s providences are exactly according to his counsels, and the copy never varies from the original.  Infinite Wisdom never changes its measures; whatever is the purposed shall undoubtedly be performed.” That’s critical.  God’s principles do not change.  If something was wrong in the days of Israel, it’s wrong today. If God desired a relationship with us in the day of Moses, He desires a relationship with us today. And so on. And thus His representatives in the Church today must administer all his ordinances according to His instructions. Jesus Himself echoed this when in Matthew 28:20 He said, “Observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”

In the business world today, contractors lose their jobs if they fail to follow the exact specifications of the blueprints they are given. Engineers can get sued if they fail to build a product to spec. Deaths can result from such disobedience. So we all do our best to follow the instructions to a tee if we want something to work well. But for some reason, when it comes to either our relationship with God, or in our obedience to His directions for our lives, we think we can improve on the design or the process.

Many of you have seen the old movie with Julia Roberts were she, looking a little like a tramp, was refused service when trying to buy something at a very expensive store on Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills, California. She was asked to leave.  Later in the week, she drops in to the same store, loaded with several bags from a competitor elite retailer, finds the same saleslady, holds ups all her shopping and utters her famous line, “Big mistake. Big mistake. Huge mistake.” You ask what’s the connection? Simply this: When God tells you to do something, do it.  If you’re there to serve others – don’t pick and choose who you serve; serve all that God brings your way.  And you can draw many of your own inferences.  The point is you don’t want God or the angels He sends in disguise coming back and saying, “Big mistake.” Let’s get serious about God’s instructions and let’s follow them religiously. 

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Gaining Access To God That's Acceptable To Him

God’s Desire To Meet With, Speak To, and Instruct, Us

Exodus 25:22: “And there I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak to you, about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel.”

Earlier in our comments about this chapter we pointed out how there seemed to be a bit of confusion as to what exactly was to go into the Ark that God wanted His people to construct.  Was it just the Testimony, the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) that He had given them in chapter 20 and if so, why was verse 21 referring to the Testimony He was to give them in the future? It turned out as we saw that the whole Testimony of God includes more than the Ten Commandments and this verse validates that interpretation. God wanted them to place in the Ark all the commands and instructions that He would give the people of Israel.

But what is really of greater focus at this point in the chapter is that God again repeats or makes reference to both His desire to meet with us and that He actually will. He intended then to meet with His people and speak to them and give them instructions.  And He still wants that for you and me today.

In the days of Moses, God said He would come and meet with Israel “from above the mercy seat”. He would come there because that was the place the blood of animals sacrificed to Him would be poured on once a year, on the Day of Atonement, and at that time, that was the necessary and acceptable sacrifice that God wanted.  Today, He comes to us also ‘through’ another ‘mercy seat’.  It is because of the acceptable sacrifice made on our behalf by His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, whose own blood was shed for us on the cross of Calvary.  What was happening with and because of the Ark in Moses’ day was symbolic of what was to happen, and did happen, with Christ on the cross – the ultimate “mercy seat” when God showed us ultimate mercy that we did not deserve and provided us a way of salvation through His Son.

It is because God accepted His Son’s sacrifice for us, and because we have acknowledged that Jesus paid the entire penalty for all of our sins, and taken Him as our Saviour and Lord, that God can and wants to come to meet with us today, to speak to us, and to give us His commandments (to us as a Body of believers through His Holy Word) and to us individually through His specific instructions for us.

While none of us were around to help build the Ark that God wanted and to experience Him visiting His people from above the mercy seat between the two cherubim, we have the privilege of being invited to meet with God, to have Him speak to us and to be guided by Him in our everyday lives because of the mercy shown to us by God and His Son.  All we have to do is accept that Christ’s sacrifice was made on our behalf; that His blood was shed for the purchase of our salvation; and that the one and only Almighty God, the Creator of the universe and all that is within it, does in fact want to meet with us, speak to us, and provide for us all we need to live this life.

The skeptic would say it’s too good to be true.  The salesman would say, “but it can’t be free.”  The scientist would say, “It doesn’t compute.”  The philosopher would say, “Surely, if there is a God, He could have come up with other plans.”  Believe me, it’s true and it’s free. It does not make sense from our perspective until we earnestly want it to see it from God’s perspective. And, no, there is no other way.  Yes, there is a catch – for one or more of all the above objections, our human nature often gets in the way of our believing it and thus we ultimately miss out.

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God's Instructions Include Not Only What, But How

The Mercy Seat and The Two Cherubs

 

Exodus 25:17-21: “And you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and one and a half cubits wide. And you shall make two cherubim of gold, make them of hammered work at the two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub at one end and one cherub at the other end; you shall make the cherubim of one piece with the mercy seat at its two ends. And the cherubim shall have their wings spread upward, covering the mercy seat with their wings and facing one another; the faces of the cherubim are to be turned toward the mercy seat. And you shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony which I shall give to you.”

To my knowledge there is only one “mercy seat” and thus its definition is singular.  Simply put, the mercy seat is physically the gold lid that sits on top of the Ark of the Covenant or Testimony that God told the Israelites to build. But its intended meaning goes much deeper.

To begin with, it would be part of the two gold winged angelic beings that God’s instructions included – one at each end of the lid, each facing inward and thus each other – and together with the lid itself, all made of one piece of crafted or hammered gold.  Hammered gold results from the process of beating gold into an extremely thin unbroken sheet for use in gilding.  The modern process of gilding involves the application of different decorative techniques with a fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give them a thin coating of gold. It is of note here that when God gives us instructions of what He wants, He also tells us how He wants it done.

In particular, the two cherubim (or angelic beings) were to have their wings spread upward and covering the mercy seat.  Thus we assume that in order for the seat to be covered, the tips of the wings of the cherubim must touch.  The eyes of the cherubim were to be looking or focused on the main part of the mercy seat – the part of the lid in the middle between them.

However, the mercy seat is also where God comes in a formal sense and dwells among His people in the Old Testament.  Later, we learn it becomes critical in the Day of Atonement – it is on the mercy seat that the sacrificial blood is poured.  Put another way, it represents the locale of where our sins are covered, when in fact, later in the New Testament, Christ’s blood is shed for us in the ultimate act of atonement (payment of the penalty) on our behalf.

And then in our current passage, once again, God repeats His instructions of what is to go inside the ark – He wanted the law, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments to be placed inside (as given to Moses already).  But here we have a bit of a snag in the text for God tells them to “put (in) the testimony which I shall give to you.”  How do we explain the future tense here?

The perplexity is best explained by having a broader definition of ‘testimony’ to include all of God’s laws that He gave and was to continue giving to the Israelites with respect to how they should live and worship.  The testimony in essence becomes God continued “communication” with His people regarding formal instructions that they are to observe and carry out.  Thus, on this day when He was giving these instructions to Moses for the people, while He had already given them the Decalogue or Ten Commandments, He knew there were still more instructions that He would give the people in the near future.  (Verse 22 of this chapter that follows this passage actually speaks of this. And once again, we find that if we sincerely want to allow Scripture to answer the questions that Scripture itself raises, it will.)

I believe that for us today, God’s instructions collectively for His people have been given.  His communication to His Body as a group has been completed. The finished work of Christ when He died for us on the Cross resulted in a completed work of salvation.  That is not to say that He cannot or will not speak to His people again as a group in the future, but I believe that will be after the return of Christ to the earth in what we refer to as “the second coming”.  For now, what remains is for each of us, individually, to heed God’s specific instructions to us – as we pursue our personal relationship with Him.  And in attempting to carry out those particular instructions to each of us, it is of paramount importance that we react the same way as the Israelites were intended to react – following all the specifications with respect to both the what and the how.

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God's Instructions Today Take Tomorrow Into Account

The Wooden Chest

Exodus 25:10-16: “And they shall construct an ark of acacia wood two and a half cubits long, and one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high.  And you shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and out you shall overlay it, and you shall make a gold molding around it.  And you shall cast four gold rings for it, and fasten them on its four feet, and two rings shall be on one side of it and two rings on the other side of it.  And you shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold.  And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, to carry the ark with them.  The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark; they shall not be removed from it.  And you shall put into the ark the testimony which I shall give you.”

This is the beginning of the very detailed instructions that God gives to Moses for the people with respect to the construction of an “ark”. Most of us immediately think of Noah’s Ark when we hear this word. However, the word has a much simpler meaning, that of a chest in which things are protected. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as a “large strong box, typically made of wood and used for storage or shipping” of something valuable. The Dictionary gives a “medicine chest” as an example.  And that definition fits both Noah’s Ark and this Ark (which later becomes known as the ‘ark of the Covenant’ or the ‘ark of the Testimony’). Both were used to store, or protect, and to transport or ship their valuable contents.  In the case of Noah, it was two of every living creature and in the case of Ark of the children of Israel it was God’s testimony or laws.

Not only was this chest to be constructed precisely to specifications in size, but also it was not to be any cheap old box that was just made-to-measure with respect to magnitude. It was to be overlaid with pure gold, inside and out, with four large gold rings through which carrying poles would be inserted.  God knew that the Ark would eventually have to be moved about and carried.  He knew how many people it would take to carry it and how much they could reasonably lift. And He provided for that.

God also instructed that once the carrying poles were inserted, they were not to be removed. This was in case the priests would have to move the ark quickly during the long life of the Israelites that was still before them. God had that in mind too.

Here’s the point: when God gives us instructions today – He has the unmatchable advantage of knowing exactly what will happen and what we will need tomorrow. But as it was with Children of Israel who took so long to be able to rely on that God with that knowledge, so it is with us.

This short passage ends with God instructing that “His testimony” be put into the ark that the Israelites were to build.  This word “testimony” is used once earlier in Scripture, in Exodus 16:34 and in both cases it refers to the “Decalogue” or the Ten Commandments.  However, since the Ten Commandments were not given to Moses until Exodus 20, one could well ask “What is going on here?”  We are left with two options.  Either the Torah or Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) is ‘anachronistic’ here – that is, this is one place the account is out of chronological order.  Or (and this is the option I prefer given all else that is taking place in order), Exodus 16:34 refers to what Aaron did some time after the Decalogue was given in Exodus 20 and the author was just telling us about it here when he was writing the account.  May I suggest, and perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek, that Author Moses had a bit of God’s own personality when it came to time for elsewhere in Scripture we read, “For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4).

 

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In Remembrance of God’s Delivery -- Exodus 16:31-36:

The house of Israel named it manna, and it was like coriander seed, white, and its taste was like wafers with honey. Then Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded, ‘Let an omerful of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread that I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar and put an omerful of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the Testimony, to be kept. The sons of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land; they ate the manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan. (Now an omer is a tenth of an ephah.)
 

The Israelites named their daily provision sent by God from heaven for their physical nurturing “manna”.  The writer tells us it was white in color, like coriander seed in appearance, and tasted like wafers dabbed in honey.  Wikipedia gives us this picture of coriander fruits:

Only of course it was all white in color.

And God also made arrangements for the Israelites to remember His provision to them.  He told Moses that they were to keep an ‘omer’ of this manna forever.  He wanted it as an exhibit to those that came afterwards, so that this part of history – and especially the fact that it was God who delivered them from slavery in Egypt and fed them daily in the wilderness -- is always remembered.

To accomplish this, Moses told Aaron, his brother, to take a jar, and fill it with manna.  (In Hebrews 9:4 of the New Testament we are told it was a jar of gold.)  As Christians today we have the opportunity to have the “Bread of Heaven” of which this manna was only typical (John 6:32).  I pray we treasure this Bread of Life in the same way.

Aaron was to put one omerful of manna in the jar.  Strong’s Lexicon tells us an omer is a dry measure of 1/10 of an ephah (about 2 litres).  Strong also defines an ephah as a dry measure of quantity about 9 imperial gallons (which is 40 litres).  There seems to be some contradiction between the first definition of an omer (2 litres or 1/10 of an ephah) and this definition of an ephah (40, rather than 20 litres).  Rabbinical writings give sizes of one-half this amount to comply with the definition of an omer.  In any case, Aaron did just that and he placed the jar, the text says, before the Testimony.

Matthew Henry translates the word “Testimony” here as simply the ark.  And this seems indeed to support the meaning given to this account in Hebrews 9:4.

We note that this manna was provided for forty years right up until the Israelites came to the land of Canaan.  While God is outside time, and can do anything by just uttering the appropriate command, we as His children need to be mindful neither to be in a hurry nor to think He is being tardy.  Remember when Jesus’ friend Lazarus died, people felt Jesus was four days late going to see his body.  But our Lord was right on time for what He wanted to accomplish through that event.  Both He and us are in a relationship that takes time, as we know it, so that His full plan for us to become more like Him will be fulfilled.

One of the greatest downfalls of many a leader is haste, often manifested with just plain impatience.  God made the children of Israel wander in the desert for forty years.  But the good news is He was there and He fed them daily.

Are you in the desert today because God wants you to learn something or to develop a characteristic that will be useful for His glory in the rest of your life?  If so, make sure you get your daily dose of Manna.  Make sure you are aware that God is there with you and He is providing for you.  And then make sure to remember it years later when you have reached your Canaan.

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Thanks for dropping by. Sign up to receive free updates. We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources. Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar. And please share this blog with your friends. Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting.  And while you’re here, why not check out some more of our recent blogs shown in the right hand column.  Ken.

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