Worship Exodus - Introduction
The LORD said to Moses, "Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering. You are to receive the offering for me from each man whose heart prompts him to give. These are the offerings you are to receive from them: gold, silver and bronze; blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair; ram skins dyed red and hides of sea cows; acacia wood; olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece.
"Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.
Exodus 25:1-9
Worship is a strange thing. Many churches refer to worship as the portion of the service where the congregation sings. Others call the entire church service worship. Still others have different opinions.
What is worship? What examples of worship do we have in the Bible? While looking through the Old Testament for something entirely unrelated, I came across the section in Exodus talking about the tabernacle built by Moses and the Hebrews during their journey away from bondage in Egypt, across the desert, and into the Promised Land. This parallels our own spiritual journey.
Before the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, all of us were still in bondage in our sins. After His resurrection, and after our acceptance of His gift of salvation, we are freed from our slavery to sin but we still walk in this world, a spiritual desert. After we die, we will be in the Promised Land with Him. For now we are still in the desert. We wander around, seeking His direction but often taking our own path.
During that time in the desert, God commanded the Israelites to build the tabernacle and use it to offer sacrifices and worship to Him. I feel that there is a great deal of symbolism in this, symbols that we can use in the present day to give us an idea of the kind of worship we can offer to God that is pleasing to Him. Don't worry, no animals will be harmed in the writing of these articles.
The true genesis of this series of articles comes from a concert my wife and I attended recently. Delirious? (like anyone is surprised about that) has a song titled "Take Off My Shoes" which has reference to the Old Testament tabernacle.
I’ll take off my shoes, I’m coming in,
Untie this rope, I’m staying with him
This references a Jewish practice of tying a rope to the leg of the high priest as he entered the Holy of Holies. If the other priests noticed the rope stop moving, they would use the rope to pull the dead body out of the room. The image was so vivid to me of the lyric saying that no matter what happens, I'm staying in the room with my Lord. It was this realization of the use of worship in the Old Testament that really made me start thinking about this.
What makes me qualified to write these articles? Nothing really. I have no theology degree, nor am I old enough to have a great deal of experience. However, I am able to read the Bible and I would like to think that I'm smart enough to figure out what some of the things mean. I am a worshiper and through music try to lead others in worship. I'm also going into this prayerfully. I don't take articles like this lightly. It's one thing to spout off about how I feel about an event or topic, it's an entirely different matter to speak about the Bible and try to glean information from it.
So, how long will this take? A long time. I don't expect to finish it until January 30, 2008. On this page there is a table showing the topics, expected publish dates, and reference verses of the articles.
Finally, what do I hope to accomplish with this? First off, to bring glory to God. While today we are not under the law, but the New Covenant with Jesus, I think it still benefits us to look back at the Old Testament and see where we came from. The church today could stand to have more deep knowledge of our Christian heritage. Personally, I'm looking forward to my journey as a writer. I'm taking on the challenges of trying to keep readers interested in a long term series, while at the same time keeping myself interested and dedicated to it. I hope to generate some feedback on these articles, for no other reason than to find out if what I'm reading in the passages is what others see as well. This will be a good test of me as a writer.
I'm hoping that everyone sticks around for a while and we can all learn something from this. God wants us to worship. Through this Worship Exodus, maybe we can learn better how to do that.