It’s Valentine’s Day coming up, how do you think my wife would feel if I gave her a bunch of bananas instead of a bunch of flowers?! Would she congratulate me for being thrifty?! How about if I you that Dorothy really dislikes bananas?! It doesn’t matter that I love them and think they make a great gift, if she doesn’t then they are not much good!
As we read the end chapters of Exodus, we see that God cares about how we worship. Its not for us to decide, “I think God would like this!” God tells us what pleases Him, and amazingly He makes a way for us to approach Him.
The Tabernacle (forerunner to the temple) was the place where sinful people could meet with God. There was a mercy seat, an altar, provision for sacrifice, there were curtains that protected the worshipper from entering the Most Holy Place. God is so kind to allow sinful people to draw near to Him, but we can only do it in the way that God shows us. As we read these chapters, we should marvel at God’s mercy and desire to meet with sinners, and also at what the tabernacle points forward to. To the one who dwelt among us, the one who put on flesh, the one who took a body so that He could be sacrificed for us. Jesus is the one the tabernacle pointed forward to, He is the true meeting place with God and when He died on the cross the curtain that stopped people from accessing the most Holy Place was torn in two from top to bottom. Through Christ’s death the way to God is now open.
No wonder the apostle Paul is full of love for Christ Jesus! In Philippians 1, he writes:
“for to me to live is Christ and die is gain.”
How we worship still matters to God, and of utmost importance is that our worship is Christ centred rather than us deciding that we can get to God some other way.
Light and Momentary Troubles 
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