Build According to Pattern

We need to realize that as Christians we live our lives according to the “pattern” that God has for us in His word. While we have unique personalities and where none of us are carbon copies of someone else, there are certain things that we are to do that really are after God’s pattern. Remember that God never changes and though times and methods change, His principles don’t.

Exodus 25:1–9 AMP

1 AND THE Lord said to Moses, 2 Speak to the Israelites, that they take for Me an offering. From every man who gives it willingly and ungrudgingly with his heart you shall take My offering. 3 This is the offering you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, 4 Blue, purple, and scarlet [stuff] and fine twined linen and goats’ hair, 5 Rams’ skins tanned red, goatskins, dolphin or porpoise skins, acacia wood, 6 Oil for the light, spices for anointing oil and for sweet incense, 7 Onyx stones, and stones for setting in the ephod and in the breastplate. 8 Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. 9 And you shall make it according to all that I show you, the pattern of the tabernacle or dwelling and the pattern of all the furniture of it.

Exodus 25:40 AMP

40 And see to it that you copy [exactly] their pattern which was shown you on the mountain.

God had a pattern for Moses to follow!

Notice when He was having Moses build the Tabernacle and every piece that was to be used in the Outer Courts, the Inner Courts and the Holy of Holies, all had to be made according to God’s instructions. There was no room for them to just do their own thing. Everything had instructions for the craftsmen to know how to build it.

Even today, you don’t build homes, or buildings without plans. This was what God did with Moses! And when it was finished God’s presence was there where He met with Moses.

2 Chronicles 5:1–14 ESV

1 Thus all the work that Solomon did for the house of the Lord was finished. And Solomon brought in the things that David his father had dedicated, and stored the silver, the gold, and all the vessels in the treasuries of the house of God. 2 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the fathers’ houses of the people of Israel, in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion. 3 And all the men of Israel assembled before the king at the feast that is in the seventh month. 4 And all the elders of Israel came, and the Levites took up the ark. 5 And they brought up the ark, the tent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tent; the Levitical priests brought them up. 6 And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who had assembled before him, were before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered. 7 Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the Most Holy Place, underneath the wings of the cherubim. 8 The cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the ark, so that the cherubim made a covering above the ark and its poles. 9 And the poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the Holy Place before the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from outside. And they are there to this day. 10 There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets that Moses put there at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the people of Israel, when they came out of Egypt. 11 And when the priests came out of the Holy Place (for all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves, without regard to their divisions, 12 and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters; 13 and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord), and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, 14 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

God had a plan for Solomon to build the temple!

When they had finished the temple, God’s presence filled it and they could no longer minister because of the cloud. Again it was when the Temple was completed according to God’s plan or pattern, then there was the tangible presence of God there. Solomon got the best woodworkers, metal workers to build a temple worthy of God being there.

1 Corinthians 3:16–23 The Message

16 You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? 17 No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple. 18 Don’t fool yourself. Don’t think that you can be wise merely by being up-to-date with the times. 19 Be God’s fool—that’s the path to true wisdom. What the world calls smart, God calls stupid. It’s written in Scripture, He exposes the chicanery of the chic. 20 The Master sees through the smoke screens of the know-it-alls. 21 I don’t want to hear any of you bragging about yourself or anyone else. Everything is already yours as a gift—22 Paul, Apollos, Peter, the world, life, death, the present, the future—all of it is yours, 23 and you are privileged to be in union with Christ, who is in union with God.

God has given us a plan to follow for our lives!