Raw Materials

A few years ago I finished out a room in my basement. My wife wanted space for her sewing and crafts projects and a guest bedroom. So I called some friends and went to work putting up furring strips, insulation, dry-wall, mud, ceiling tiles, trim, paint, etc… Now we have a large beautiful room for guests and my wife who promptly declared it a no-kid, no-dog zone. As I look back over the last few weekends, I feel like I spent more time driving back and forth to the hardware store and shopping for materials than I did working on the room. It seems like I was there two and three times a day every Friday and Saturday. If only I had known exactly what I needed and had the materials on hand first, I could have worked so much faster.

God, being a much better craftsman than I am, was wise enough to give Moses a materials list with exactly what he needed before he started construction.

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 (Exodus 25:3-7)

It has been estimated that it took a ton of gold, two and a half tons of silver, and three tons of bronze to make all of the items listed here.[i] Moses is told what he needs and where to get it. He is told to get these materials from the Israelites themselves.

Now, the Israelites had been slaves for four hundred, thirty years (Ex. 12:40-41). They had only been free for three months at this point (Ex. 19:1) and that time had been spent wandering in a desert wasteland. How often do slaves have access to the kind of wealth indicated here? Where would they get this much gold, silver, bronze, precious stones, etc…? The materials certainly were not laying around in the desert.

The fact is they already had all these materials with them. God had given them what they needed when they left Egypt.

The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. The LORD had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians (Ex. 12:35-36).

When we give our lives to Jesus and are set free from slavery, it is just the beginning a long and arduous journey. It always takes longer for God to get Egypt out of us than it takes Him to get us out of Egypt. The good news is that right up front, God gives us the tools and materials we will need to build His habitation in our lives. Other blessings, gifts, and ministries may develop over time but the raw materials for the temple of the Holy Spirit are given to us on day one. We need only to allow God to work them together for His purposes.

Why Don’t We Recognize These Materials?

Wayne Cordiero, who pastors one of the nation’s largest churches in Hawaii, tells this story,

A dear pastor friend and I were talking one day. He was having trouble finding quality leaders in his church. He was on the verge of burnout from undertaking many of the ministry responsibilities himself.

“If I had a bigger church,” he observed, “there would be more leaders to chose from. But right now there just aren’t any!”

“When you look at a forest, what do you see?” I asked.

“Elementary, Watson,” he quipped, “trees.”

“That’s your problem,” I replied, “All you see are trees. You’ve got to see more than trees. You’ve got to see the houses. When I look at a forest, I see houses, dressers, rocking chairs, bed frames, cabinets, and desks. They’re all in the forest. No, you won’t find them already completed. But the potential is all there.”[ii]

Many times, we are like this pastor. We are complaining to God that we don’t have what it takes to live a godly life. Even though Peter tells us that God …has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness (2 Pet 1:3) and Paul tells the Corinthians that they …do not lack any spiritual gift… (1 Cor. 1:7a). The problem is that we often do not recognize why God put these things in our lives.

I imagine that many of the Israelites wondered why they were carrying around hides of sea cows in the desert. Maybe they were tempted to throw them away but God impressed on them that they needed to keep them. When the offering for the tabernacle was received, the people finally understood their part and purpose in the bigger plan. God may have put talents and gifts in you that seem useless because they aren’t like the “spiritual gifts” you have seen used by others. Be patient, let God keep working in you. He put those things there for a reason and someday He will call them forth for His purpose.

Give God Time to Explain Your Gifts

A lack of patience is one of the biggest hurdles the person of God must overcome in letting God work His way out in our lives. The Israelites actually ran out of patience and used part of what God had given them for the tabernacle to form a false god.

While Moses was on the mountain receiving the covenant from God, the people became impatient because it just took too long. So they gathered around Aaron and said,

“Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (32:1-4)

They took the gold that God had given when they left Egypt and used it to build an idol. God had given that gold to them for His dwelling place but they could not wait long enough for Him to explain it to them. This was due to the fact that they were impatient and uncomfortable when Moses took so long returning.

It is said that patience is a virtue you should never pray for. It is dangerous to ask God for patience because there is only one way to gain it and that is through waiting out circumstances that make you uncomfortable. But whether you ask God or not, He will bring you through times of developing patience (Remember, it is a fruit of Spirit!). How we react to uncomfortable and even painful circumstances determines the depth of our character and therefore to what extent God can work His way out in our lives and use us to build His kingdom. Here, the Israelites could not even wait forty days. They have to end their discomfort because Moses has been “so long” on the mountain.

In our house we have many discussions about “dog years.” You know, how one of our years equals seven dog years… That is why all you have to do is leave the house and come back in a couple minutes and your dog will jump on you with a lavish display of affection to welcome you home. To him, it has been hours or days since he last saw you. Cat years must work the other way since you could be gone for days and the cat acts like it has only been a few minutes. My children don’t like the fact that our dog ages faster than they do and has become the oldest ‘kid’ in our house. Recently my family went going on vacation for eleven days and we had to put our dog in a kennel during that time. As we were dropping the dog off, my son turned to me and said “it is going to seem like seventy-seven days to him!” It was true. When we returned, the dog had forgotten what little training he previously had. It seemed like forever to him. I guess he gave up on the idea of us ever returning and saw no reason to continue to act civilized. Time is totally different to my dog than it is to me.

This thought makes me wonder how God views the fits we throw because He is “so long” in acting the way we expect and sometimes demand. To put it in perspective, think of Peter’s words, do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day (2 Pet. 3:8). Using this as a guide[iii] we see that we have only been waiting two days for Jesus’ return. As a matter of fact, we are in the third ‘day’… If we extrapolate, we see that an hour to God is about forty-one years and eight months. Nine months to us is only a minute to Him (try telling that to a pregnant mom). A second to Him would be four and a half days to us. One of our years would only be a minute and fifteen seconds to Him. So Moses had only been gone about nine seconds and the people began to lose faith in God. No wonder God becomes frustrated with them and wants to start over.

Recently I had someone tell me, “I know a day is as a thousand years with God but it is still a thousand years to me!” That is our problem, we need to begin to be more concerned with God’s view of things than our own. Realize God is not being slow, we are impatient. Take the long view. See that God is working in His perfect time instead of our imperfect time. Keep praying, asking, and knocking but let His peace reign in your heart and mind as you wait for His perfect timing.

Don’t Look to Men to Explain it All to You

Another reason that the children of Israel were uncomfortable was that their eyes were on Moses instead of God. We will always be uncomfortable in our relationship with God if our eyes are on a man. Even if that man is truly a man of God, the people were not to put their faith in Moses but in the Almighty. They would not have had this problem if they had gone up to the mountain with Moses like God planned.

God never planned to have a go between. He wanted to talk to the people directly. We see this when Moses tells us that,

The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. (At that time I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.)… (Dt. 5:4-5)

Since the people were afraid to interact with God directly, He worked through a man. Later the priesthood is added as a layer between the people and the voice of God. God later nullified this structure by pouring His Holy Spirit on each of us. We are supposed to be hearing the voice of God for ourselves now. God still gives leaders to the church and but they are not go betweens to tell us what God is saying, they are …to prepare God’s people for works of service (Eph. 4:12a). Even when a prophet speaks into our lives we are told to judge his word for ourselves (1 Cor. 14:29). We have been deceived into thinking that these leaders are to go to the mountain, hear from God, tell us what He said, and then DO all the ministry. We are very uncomfortable when called on to stand on our own two feet. It is usually when a church begins to rely too heavily on a man that God has to remove that man to recapture His people’s attention.

Don’t Try to Re-Created What You Are Used To

Since the Israelites had their eyes on Moses, they were uncomfortable without him and used God’s blessing to create a comfort zone for themselves. The golden calf they made was a religious comfort zone. They had seen calf worship in Egypt and wanted a god they could see (since they could no longer see Moses). Many times when we are uncomfortable with change, we try to re-create the religion we have seen. This is why the proponents of the last revival usually become those who oppose today’s revival. Things are not happening the same way they did back in the good old days. We need to understand that even if we could get all the same people in the same places, sing the same song, pray the same way, inflect the name of God the same way, we would find that we are missing Him. God is on the move. If we return to where He was, we miss where He is. Imagine the Israelites returning to Sinai years later to meet with God. The problem would be that the cloud of His glory had moved on. Be careful of falling back into religious comfort zones due to the discomfort of the new and unknown .

Another way we use God’s blessing to create a comfort zone is in the pursuit of possessions. God wants us to be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion… (2 Cor. 9:11). But we take the gold that we were supposed to use for the tabernacle and use it for our comfort. If only we can get a bigger house or a newer car, we will be happy… If it takes possessions to make you happy, you are a materialist. If you serve God to get possessions to make you happy, you are still a materialist.

Now take back all of your accusations that I have a “spirit of poverty” and re-read the previous paragraph. The great thing about God’s riches is that if you are funneling them to the kingdom for His glory, He always gives you enough for a surplus. Notice that after the Israelites used the gold earrings to make an idol, they still had enough to build the tabernacle since the offering was not taken until later (we are looking at the instructions for the offering which does not take place until chapter 35). What they wasted on the calf was their own part! The left over that they could have enjoyed. Will you waste your part, or for that matter, God’s part to create a comfort zone or will you wait for God’s move and give back all He has entrusted to you to see His glory go forward?

[ii] Cordeiro…

[iii] We understand that God is outside of our time but this can help us envision a bigger picture.