The Tabernacle, a Shadow of Christ

While Moses is receiving the law on Mount Sinai, the people of Israel make a golden calf and worship it. At Kadesh Barnea, on the edge of Canaan, they have God’s command, yet they follow the human idea of sending spies. When they see the giants, they are afraid and weep all night, saying they should go back to Egypt.

What broke down was their unbelief, not God’s plan. God answered them in the very words of their grumbling and allowed forty years of life in the wilderness. Even in that wilderness he fed and clothed them with manna and water from the rock, and held them close to the end. Making them cross the Red Sea was not meant to punish them either. It was love, meant to baptize them and make them his own people.

When human thinking is mixed in, God’s work fails. Those who lack certainty must fall on their faces and pray, no matter what. For anyone who believes in the cross that the risen Jesus Christ bore in their place, it is only right to live faithfully and not defile that grace.