Tread Carefully
I wonder what it must have been like to be amongst those in the Exodus who went through the parted Red Sea. If there were more than 600,000 men, we can only assume the total was around two to three million. Although all were descendants of Abraham, that would have had little impact on them. Abraham had died almost five hundred years earlier. All they really had in common was that the Egyptians had turned their men into slaves. Suffering usually brings people together, but there’s little evidence the people thought of themselves as a single unit. They had some leaders but no single man who had grown up with them and who they wanted to lead them. Moses was absent from their midst for all but the last part of their time in Egypt.
After bringing them out of their nation of slavery God directed them to Mt. Sinai. They would spend a year camped at its base. Here they were given the Law and here they constructed the Tabernacle. God would, for the first time ever, dwell in the midst of a people He had sovereignly called to be His own. The extensive and exacting description of how the Tabernacle was to be built demonstrated how important God’s requirements were. The one true God who fills the universe was manifestly dwelling amongst a rag-tag group of people who knew little of why they were even there.
We all but take for granted God’s indwelling in us personally, and with us corporately when we come together as God’s people. Tread carefully. The same God who showed Himself in glory then, now lives in you. Be sensitive. Honour Him; reverence Him; worship Him.
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