No 3

(The Tabernacle Part 2)

When the Tabernacle was completed (Exod 32), the Jews were at the foot of Mount Sinai. The Lord had anticipated moving His people around so the Tabernacle was made as a portable worship centre. When the Jews arrived at the wilderness of Zin near the land of Canaan they did not want to go in because they listened to ten spies that had been sent by Moses to spy the land. The ten spies had found its inhabitants to be giants and were afraid. Their problem was not fear, they just did not trust God to deliver them; the other two spies, Joshua and Caleb wanted to go in and conquer the land because they trusted God. Of the 12 spies, one from each tribe, we remember only the names of Joshua and Caleb; can you name just one of the other 10 spies? So, from that point, they wandered for forty years in the wilderness and had made camp in about forty different locations. Can you just imagine the logistics of more than a million people moving around and camping in the wilderness? Only God could have done that; unfortunately, He did it to get rid of those who had not trusted Him back at Zin “But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness.” (Numbers 14:32, 33). The Tabernacle had to be portable and the tribe of Levi had the charge of moving it from one place to the next; this in itself was not a small task. There were several wagons of utensils, cloths, boards and pillars to move. Some of the items such as the Ark of the Covenant, the table of incense, the table of shewbread, etc had to be carried on foot with staves. The Tabernacle was God’s portable abode until His people were finally able to go into the Promised Land and build Him a permanent place of worship called the Temple.