Walking With Christ

Exodus 33:7 Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.(ESV)

Exodus 33:7-11 was the basis for the Wednesday night service last week. Reading back through the scriptures and notes lead me down a bunny trail that found a few interesting things.(ESV)

Most people know that Moses would meet with God face-to-face. Moses would bring the concerns of the people to God and take the word of God back to the people. I think a lot of people miss the operative word in verse seven though. “Everyone”.

In verse eight we see how the people responded to the truth of verse seven and in that, I think, we actually see the beginning of the people of Israel and even a few truths about humanity that are still true today.

Exodus 11:8 Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent.(ESV)

The tent of meeting was for everyone. Yet, only Moses and Joshua are mentioned as regular visitors. Everyone else would watch as Moses went to the tent. They would watch and worship from the comfort of their own tents. They would go to Moses with their complaints, but they would not accept the invitation to go for themselves.

Some people might want to argue and say that the Levitical laws said that the people had to be ritually pure to enter the holy of holies. They had to be this, or they had to be that. I would remind everyone that the laws in Leviticus did not exist at this point. The tent of meeting was a place meant for everyone to meet with God on a personal level. God wanted to have a personal relationship with every single person He had saved from captivity.

How did the people respond?

They feared being in His presence. They feared His presence so much that even the afterglow that was on Moses was too much for them and they made him wear a veil to cover his face. God respects free will and thus the laws of Moses were handed down. The Levitical laws and the formal structure of the society that would become Israel was formed. That still wasn’t enough for the people. They demanded a human king to act as Moses did with the tent of meeting.

God wrote the laws so that no human being could possibly fulfill them completely. He made many allowances for human frailty and flaws. That’s why we allow divorce. It wasn’t in God’s original design but people wanted the ability to change their minds on even the foundational parts of relationships.

The people became so separated from God that only the high priest of the Levite tribe could enter the holy of holies once a year and only to perform specific rituals. There was no conversation between friends. A pillar of fire didn’t come down during that time.

The people chose fear over a relationship with our creator.

When Jesus died on the cross, God shook the earth and smashed all of that. He tore the veil as if to say “no more, I will have a relationship with My people”. Jesus is the door to the Father and that door was thrown wide open when Jesus died.

The sad part? Many people today still choose to stand in the door of their tent and watch Moses go be in the very presence of God. All they had to do then was walk a short distance to the tent of meeting and greet God as a friend. There is a difference between standing where we are while cowering in fear or holding on to our iniquities and making excuses for not getting closer to God and boldly running towards the door of the tent in joyous expectation of seeing our best friend face to face.

The veil is torn. The invitations have been sent. Will you join the party in the tent? We are celebrating the union of Christ and His bride.