By God’s Design, Not Our Design - Exodus 25-29

 Exodus 25:9 (ESV)

Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.

Exodus 25:40 (ESV)

And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.

Exodus 27:8 (ESV)

... As it has been shown you on the mountain, so shall it be made.

When Moses went up to the mountain God must have shown him a video of the Tabernacle completely built.    Maybe God used a first generation DVD.   Or, perhaps God used a hologram.   Maybe God just had some old fashioned blue prints in the mountain and Moses brought them down with him, along with the Ten Commandments.   We are not sure how God communicated to Moses what the Tabernacle should look like, but it is for certain that God had a plan and communicated, in some way, that plan to Moses.  Notice what we read about God’s plan for the Tabernacle (and even the Temple that Solomon would build):

Acts 7:44 (ESV) 

“Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it, according to the pattern that he had seen.

Hebrews 8:5(ESV) 

They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.”

1 Chronicles 28:11-12 (ESV) 

Then David gave Solomon his son the plan of the vestibule of the temple, and of its houses, its treasuries, its upper rooms, and its inner chambers, and of the room for the mercy seat; and the plan of all that he had in mind for the courts of the house of the LORD, all the surrounding chambers, the treasuries of the house of God, and the treasuries for dedicated gifts;

There is no doubt that God had a pattern.   The pattern could have been a vision of Heaven and the way God designed the heavenly tabernacle.   We have no idea.  But we do know:

1. Moses, despite all his training in Egypt and his skills to live in the desert was not asked his opinion about the architecture of the tabernacle. 

2. Those solicited and/or commanded by God to build the tabernacle did not get any input into the building of it.   Despite their skills.   

3. The one million plus people did not get a vote as to what it looked like. 

4. Moses’ family and right hand people did not get a voice in the design.  

Moses was given the pattern in some form or fashion and he was only the conveyor of the pattern, not the designer of it.   Such is how God works.  We like to design our lives to fit “us.”   God wants to design our lives to fit “Him.”   There are no accidents in God’s design.  Not in His creation.  Not the Tabernacle.  Not in the Temple.   Not in the Church (God is not asking us to re-do the Church to fit today’s culture.). God has a plan and we are to carry out the plan.   We are not the designers of life.  We are the doer’s of what God has designed.