Today we are studying a longer passage of Scripture. This section can read like an Ikea catalogue - construction, detailed building plans - and we can struggle to make sense of it.
If someone was doing their Bible reading plan, and got up to Exodus 35, and saw the list of materials and objects, and they started skimming and flipping. Why should they stop? Why should they read through? Our passage is actually an echo of chapters that came earlier in Exodus pertaining to the building of the Tabernacle and the construction of the Priestly Garments (Ex 25 - 30). Now God had already given Moses detailed instructions, so why should we go through something that we have already read before? Why shouldn’t we just flip to chapter 39 and continue with the more interesting parts of Scripture?
What we hope to see from this section of Scripture is that we can read any part of God’s word and be encouraged by it. The message is simple: Great is Thy Faithfulness. We have sung this song before. We tell our friends that God is faithful, because that is our assurance. But when they ask us “how so?” - sometimes we don’t know how to answer. Tonight, we see one small slice of God’s faithfulness in this passage.
(A) Obedience Delayed: God provides a pattern again
In chapters 25-30, God speaks to Moses. Notice the chain of communication:
The chain of communication goes like this: God Himself speaks to Moses, and Moses to the people. Over and over again, we read the phrase “the LORD said”. Specific instructions were given about the design of the Tabernacle and the Priestly Garments. God gives Moses a clear pattern to convey to the people to follow. And the materials were to come from the people! Every man whose heart moved him was to contribute.
This is the essence of chapters 25-30. God speaks. Moses does not speak. Israel is hearing him speak for the first time on this in Exodus 35.
But we notice a gap between the instructions in Exo 25-30, and Exo 35. What happened in between?
Before Moses can relay God’s words to Israel, Exodus 32 happens. In 32:7-8, God is on the mountain. God is telling Moses the pattern in detail. And God stops. He says: Moses, go down now.
So Moses and Joshua were hurrying back down, because God had spoken and Moses knew the wickedness of what was going on. And the sound of the people was so loud that Joshua thought it was the sound of war. But Moses knew. Moses knew his people, whom he had heard cry out under the Egyptians, and whom he had heard rejoice and sing after they passed through the Red Sea. And Moses said: that is not the sound of war. It is the sound of singing and dancing, of worship and reveling in idolatry. God’s good gifts and God’s good plan are twisted into idolatry. God’s blessing to Israel becomes a curse in their hands. Thus, Moses smashed the tablets before he could give it to the people.
In Exo 34:28, the story loops. Moses is up on the same mountain, with God writing the same commandments. This time, it is another 40 days and 40 nights. The same mountain, the same pattern, the same people waiting below. Will Israel obey? Can Israel obey? What happens if they get it wrong? The last time their heart moved them to take off their jewelry, it was melted down into a golden calf.
This is the tension in our text.
(B) Obedience Displayed: all that I needed / Thy hand hath provided
There is a call and response sequence in the text. Moses calls, and the people respond.
Moses calls upon the people to give contributions to the Lord (Exo 35:5b-9). In Exo 35:22b-28, we find that each item that Moses asks for is freely given by the people. The crowdfunding is a success! He doesn’t just ask for materials, he also asks for people to build it (Exo 35:10). It wasn’t just the work of Bezalel and Oholiab. The skillful women spin with their hands. We read in the text that the men and women step up in accordance to what was required of them (Exo 35:25, 39:7b, 21b, 26b, 29b, 31b). The instructions are carried out precisely. The craftsmen / workmen do “as the LORD had commanded Moses”. From the measurements to the design to the materials used, the people obeyed God’s instructions.
The construction of the Tabernacle was completed because they obeyed (Exo 39:32).
Is there more for us in this text? We see them disobey grievously, and now they obey. In a text that is this straightforward, it is easy to go away feeling like we should do better. That we must tithe more, volunteer more, serve more, as the LORD has commanded. That’s not a bad thing. But the problem with strong emotion is that it can be overcome by stronger emotion, or it can ebb away. We need more than just strong emotion to obey - we need deep conviction. Our obedience needs to have its roots in a promise.
Bible teacher Alistair Begg often says, “Don’t ask me what I feel. Ask me what I know about God”. This section in Exodus isn’t just here to inspire us to feel like we should obey. If we linger on it, it shows us things about God which form the strong roots that fuel our obedience.
The supplies: God sovereignly supplies in His sufficiency
Consider this: who supplies the contributions and the skills? When the people left Egypt, they plundered the Egyptians and left with silver and gold. God gave them favour - that mere slaves could leave with gold and silver that was not theirs (Exo 12:35-36). All of the resources that they give are God’s gift to them (Ex 12:35-36).
Now if we breeze through these passages, we might miss a small story embedded within. In Exo 36:3b-7, the people brought their offering every morning. And it grew so overwhelming that ALL the craftsmen who were doing EVERY sort of task came MID-TASK and said: please STOP. That’s quite dramatic. How much gold exactly did they take from Egypt? Remember Exodus 32. Some gold had already been used up to build the calf. Israel had enough gold to make a golden calf, and the Tabernacle, and the Priestly Garments, and have left over. Even after their disobedience in building the golden calf, God supplied what was needed for His work to be accomplished. We are to see the sufficiency of the gift. The question is: Why should we not be part of the work that God has given us? God is sufficient for the work that He has given to us!
But consider also 2 Corinthians 9. God loves a cheerful giver. Whoever sows bountifully will reap bountifully. So we try to smile when we tithe. What does it look like for a people to give bountifully like the Israelites, and to be able to reap bountifully? The gold items that the Israelites gave did not double or triple. Their earrings did not grow back. We must think on this carefully, and will come back to what it means to reap bountifully in a few weeks as we continue to study Exodus.
The skills: God sovereignly saves and spares
We know also that the skills that they had used to build the tabernacle were given by God. God filled the workers with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, ability and expertise. Who are these people that God puts his skill and Spirit into? It is the same people who took off their earrings to create the golden calf. God now puts his Spirit into people that were previously idolators. There is no selection test - these are not scholars in some Creative Arts Programme. When we find them in Exodus 1 they are slaves. Their lives were “bitter with hard service”. They were made to work “ruthlessly”. God sovereignly puts his skill into those whom he chooses for his work.
Our mistake is that we think of Eden as God’s construction project and Exodus as Israel’s. In fact, the materials, the skill, the copyright plans, the people - they are all provided by God for His work. God does not invite us to obedience out of His need. He invites us to obedience out of His grace. Like us, these are unfaithful people, and it is not our faithfulness, but God’s faithfulness that allows us to fulfil his work. God sovereignly saves and spares - our obedience does not force God’s faithfulness. Rather, our obedience is the result of God’s faithfulness flowering and bearing fruit.
(C) Obedience is for us today: hearing God’s voice, seeing God’s Son
What does all that mean for me today? What does that mean for me when I do not obey? What does that mean for me when I go home, and choose to lie down and scroll Instagram, and feel anxious and cannot go to sleep?
I want to obey - how can I obey? If that is your cry, what tonight’s passage tells us is that obedience begins by looking at the word and listening to God’s voice. And they are the same thing.
Consider this: what was a trait that marked the obedience of Israel? Exodus 35:21 tells us that the people’s hearts were stirred and moved. What was moving them? How was this contrasted by what they were moved by in creating the golden calf?
In Exodus 32, the people “saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain”. And they gathered together. Perhaps they were anxious, perhaps they were fearful. Their eyes were on Moses’ delay, and their ears were filled with each others’ grumblings and their assessment of their situation. This was what they were looking at and listening to. And it moved their hearts — producing anxiety, fear, boredom — and they decided to obey their hearts by creating gods for themselves. Friends, listening to your heart is important. It tells you what you have been consuming and taking in. But it gives you self-knowledge, not knowledge of God.
We contrast this with Exodus 35, where Moses “assembled” the people - gathered them - and spoke the Lord’s commandments. And the people listened to God’s words. Listening preceded obedience, enabled obedience, gave shape to obedience. They were being taught to obey by listening to the words of God. And this didn’t mean that their hearts were not involved - we know from 35:21 that their hearts were stirred and moved. Think back to the start: the LORD speaks to Moses. Moses speaks to the people. People speak to each other. And the voice of the LORD, through His prophet, to His people, gets repeated as a voice in their hearts. This is why community matters. This is why what we consume when we wake and before we sleep matters. (It makes intuitive sense to us. When we want to hear words of love from our parents, we don’t just think and imagine how they’d speak to us. We go to them to hear what they have to say! So it is with God!).
Now this is not to say that we are to ignore or suppress our feelings. We are encouraged by the Psalms to acknowledge how we feel and to cry out! But thankfully, our feelings do not have the final say. Today’s text tells us that when we are anxious and unable to obey, we don’t turn to flakey things like social media. We are to flee distraction and consumption as easy fixes that mend absolutely nothing. Instead, we turn to God’s Word and to friends who bring us God’s Word and speak it to our heart to offer it the foundation and stability that we desperately need. Obedience comes from going to God’s words, and letting our feelings be shaped into obedience, into stability, and into love by hearing the voice of someone who knows and loves us.
2 Corinthians 3 reminded us last week that we are being transformed into the same image to be like Jesus. As we look at the glory of God, we are transformed degree by degree. Jen Wilkin, a bible teacher, says: Whatever we look at is what our heart grows to love. If we look at distraction we will grow to love being distracted, but if we look at God’s Son, in His Word, we will be transformed to be like Him.
The result of the obedience of Israel was that they built a Tabernacle for God to dwell with them. Their listening and their looking - at God’s words - was what helped them to obey.
Today, God is not a quiet voice in our heart that we have to keep guessing at. “Is it Him? Is it not?”. God speaks clearly in His Word, and we hear Him as we would a friend. He speaks, and we are to obey by looking, by listening, and then by doing. How are you obeying today?
A final point of application from this passage is one of assurance. God saves hopeless sinners. Remember: Who does God place His skill and Spirit into? He pours it into people who took the gold that He had given them, and built a golden calf. So if you feel like you have messed up with years of disobedience, and your heart is hard? Think: Who really paid for the building of the calf? It was God’s gold that they spent. God’s gift that they took and squandered. They didn’t go and get more gold – where would they go? God’s gracious provision is what paid the price for their sin and their wrongdoing. Familiar, right?
So when we sing the song ‘Great is Thy Faithfulness’ and it says:
I could not love Thee, so blind and unfeeling;
Covenant promises fell not to me.
This is Israel’s story in Exodus 32. A rebellious people and a golden calf. But we also sing:
Then without warning, desire, or deserving,
I found my Treasure, my pleasure, in Thee.
That’s tonight’s chapters. Exodus 35 to 39. We see that God, through His gracious provision, helps a rebellious people to turn to Him and find treasure. Something precious. To slaves, whom the Egyptians do not value, God turns His face and inclines His ear - He hears their cry, and He gives them something precious. He gives them Himself.