He Is- Among Us
Verse: Exodus 29:44-46
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"So I will consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar and will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests.
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Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God.
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They will know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.
God isn’t some distant being
watching his creation from afar. He chose to be in the midst of his people, so
they could know him personally. He reminded Moses of his goal in freeing the
Israelites and establishing them as a nation: “that I might dwell among them”
(Exodus 29:26).
Today, God doesn’t dwell in a
building, a temple or a palace; he lives in the hearts of his people. Through
Christ’s death and resurrection, he performed a mighty miracle of freeing us
from sin so he could send to us his indwelling Holy Spirit. Wherever we roam,
he is with us. Wherever believers gather, he is among us.
Commentary:
So I will
consecrate the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. I will also
consecrate both Aaron and his sons to minister to Me as priests. I will
dwell among the children of Israel and will be their God. And they shall
know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.
a. So I will consecrate: God makes it clear who performs the work of consecration. We are tempted to think that we sanctify our self
because we are so immersed in the sanctifying process and because it
draws so much out of us. Yet God does the work - what we do is remove
barriers and spend time with the focus on Him.
b. To minister to Me as priests:
Aaron and his sons had a ministry to the people of Israel, but their
first ministry was to the LORD. They might be successful in ministry to
the people, but if they failed in their ministry to the LORD, their
ministry failed.
i. “The best part of all Christian work is that part which only God sees.” (Andrew Bonar)
c. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God: God promised to show His glory through consecrated priests. When Moses and Aaron performed this ceremony of consecration, Leviticus 9:23-24 tells us the result: Then
the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people, and fire came out
from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the
altar. When all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.
i. There
is a price to pay for being fully surrendered to God. The ceremony of
consecration was long, bloody, and it took persistence to complete. Yet
the reward was far greater than the cost - the glory of the LORD was
revealed not only to the consecrated priests, but to the people in
general.
d. I will dwell among the children of Israel and will be their God: God again stressed the idea of relationship in the process of consecration. This worship-filled relationship with God is both the instrument and the fruit of consecration.
David Guzik's Commentaries on the Bible are reproduced by permission of David Guzik, Siegen, Germany. All other rights reserved.
This devotion is from the NIV New Women's Devotional Bible or True Identity by Zondervan. Used with permission.
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