Parasha Pekudei 5782

Me

I am a big dog person… And we have several dogs ourselves, an American bulldog and a pit bull who are both rescues and are sweethearts, and we also have a Great Dane who is about a year and a half old and we’ve had since he was a puppy. And having a Great Dane is an experience on its own… He’s a whole different kind of personality… He is super vocal, he is very clingy, he is an attention hog, and he 100% has no clue how big he really is and wants so bad to be a lapdog...

But what is really funny about him is that he loves to push the boundaries to see what he can get away with. The kids’ bedrooms and our guest bedroom is down a hall on one side of our house and the dogs are not allowed in that hall or those rooms. If we are all in one of the kids’ rooms he will stand right at the doorway of that hallway, literally with his toes right up to the edge of the doorway, and often with one paw over the line—but only one paw… And he’ll have his neck wrapped around the door into the hallway as far as he can possibly get it without putting his body in the hall. He knows he isn’t suppose to be in the hall, but he’s going to try his hardest to see how far he can push that line...

If we’re in the kitchen cooking or washing dishes or something and he comes in there we’ll tell him to get out the kitchen.

(Talk about how the kitchen/living room/dining room are designed in a sort of circle)

He will leave the kitchen and go into the living room, then loop right back around from the living room into the dining room and try to come in the kitchen where we are through the dining room. Then we’ll tell him again to get out the kitchen and he’ll try to loop back around again. Or he’ll stand at the door from the dining room to the kitchen and try to stick his head as far in the kitchen as possible…

And he does stuff like this all the time… He is crazy cute and he is pretty smart… If he were human he’d be a little kid in the backseat of the car with his finger pointed at his sibling and only a quarter of an inch from their arm screaming, “I’m not touching you!!!” And he’d definitely grow up to be a criminal defense lawyer, no doubt about it.

And if we aren’t paying close attention to him he will absolutely try to get away with anything he possibly can. And one of the keys to getting him to be obedient is to hold him accountable… If we let him get away with something even just once he’ll think it’s carte blanch to do it whenever he wants.

We

What’s funny is that as I sit here talking about my goofy Great Dane, I can 100% easily interchange my own walk with the Lord with that story…

And I’m sure anyone of us listening to this message today can do the same…

How often has the Lord told us not to do something and yet we want to find every possible way to get right up to the line of actually doing what he said not to do and still be able to say we didn’t actually do it.

How often are we guilty of trying to push the boundaries? How often are we guilty of trying to see how much sin and exactly what caliber of sin we can get away with? Or how much of a wrong thing we can kind of justify…?

How often do we try to push the line on living like the world and see how far we can go without losing our faith? Romantic relationships before marriage are prime examples… We love to see just how close to the line we can get before it’s officially sex… How far we can push things before other people may find out… Or we try to justify things with, “well we’re going to get married at some point anyways...” Or whatever other excuses we can come up with…

Oddly, it’s really amazing just how similar we really can be to a dog…

God

This week we read Parasha Pekudei, Exodus 38:21-40:38, which is our final Parasha of Sefer Shemot. Pekudei begins with the recording of the weight of the precious materials used in the building of the Mishkan and its furnishings. This is, in essence, an accounting record of all the precious metals that were given (in financial equivalency) and how those items were used on the P&L of the construction of the Mishkan. Chapter 39 begins with relaying the details put into the production of the priestly garments for Aaron and his sons. The chapter then ends with the completion of the work of the Tabernacle and two clarifications that B’nei Yisrael had done all the work exactly as Adonai had shown Moses.

Chapter 40, the final chapter of Exodus, details the actual procedures for the assembly of the Tabernacle, followed by the actual raising of the Tabernacle for the very first time. When Moses completed the work of assembling the Mishkan the Shechinah of Adonai filled the Tabernacle and took up residence there before the entire Nation.

Tradition tells us that the building of the Mishkan is a symbolic partnership between Israel and Adonai in a work of recreation. Particularly in recreating a dwelling for the Presence of God within His creation. What’s really interesting about this concept is something we find in our Parasha this week that is dynamically unique but also extremely important in our walk as disciples of Yeshua today. And as we do I want us to keep this principle in mind:

(Repeat)

So let’s dive into the text together…

Exodus 39:32 TLV

So all the work of the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, was finished. Bnei-Yisrael did everything according to what Adonai had commanded Moses—they did it just so.

Bezalel, Oholiab and those working with them in building the Tabernacle and its furnishings have now officially completed all their work. They have built everything prescribed according to the very intricate specifications Moses saw in the heavenlies when he was on Mount Sinai in the Cloud of Glory. They did everything exactly as Adonai had prescribed through Moses.

The following verses state that all of the items prescribed by HaShem for the assembly of the Tabernacle was brought to Moses. Then runs through a detailed check list of everything that was made and its purpose in the Mishkan.

Now let’s skip down to verse 42…

Exodus 39:42–43 TLV

According to everything that Adonai had commanded Moses, Bnei-Yisrael had done all the work just so. When Moses saw the entire work, and that they had done it just as Adonai had commanded, Moses blessed them.

Now, remember a few moments ago I mentioned Jewish tradition likens the assembly of the Mishkan to a second creation of sorts, and specifically a partnership between Israel and Adonai in recreating a dwelling for the Presence of God among His creation. Well here’s where things begin to get interesting.

God prescribed everything to be done in a very specific fashion, and this is by no means a surprise as the whole purpose was to be a holy dwelling for the Shechinah. So, B’nei Yisrael followed all the design specs laid before them by Moses from the Lord. When they finished their work Moses looked everything over and was pleased with the work. The Torah says that Moses saw the work and blessed them. Rabbinic tradition postulates that Moses’ blessing over Israel was as follows, “May the Divine Spirit rest upon the work of your hands.”

So here the fun part about all of this, and we’re going to see this twice in Pekudei, but this is the first.

In the Creation account we read in Bereshit we see God’s divinely orchestrated seven day creation period, six days in which He spoke something into existence and the seventh day He rested and established the eternal Shabbat. As He created He declared His creation good, culminating in looking over his entire creation and proclaiming it is very good.

As we read through Exodus 39 we read the detail of each part of the work that was done in building the Tabernacle. With each and every section of what was created for the Tabernacle the section is closed out with the phrase Ka’asher tzivah Adonai et-Moshe, “as Adonai commanded Moses.” And this occurs a total of seven times throughout Exodus 39, it described the work that was done followed by the statement that the work was done exactly as Adonai commended Moses. (We see this in chapter 39 verses 1, 5, 7, 21, 26, 29, and 31.)

Then, following the seventh time we read verses 42 and 43

Exodus 39:42–43 TLV

According to everything that Adonai had commanded Moses, Bnei-Yisrael had done all the work just so. When Moses saw the entire work, and that they had done it just as Adonai had commanded, Moses blessed them.

Much like Adonai rested from His work of creation, Bezalel, Oholiab, and B’nei Yisrael rest from their work of creation for HaShem. And just as Adonai proclaimed all His creation is very good, Moses declares the work of Israel for the Mishkan very good by proclaiming a blessing over the people.

Then we transition to Exodus 40, the closing chapter of Exodus in which we read about Moses and the Kohanim actually setting up the Tabernacle.

Exodus 40:1–3 TLV

Then Adonai spoke to Moses saying, “On the first day of the first month, you will set up the Tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting. You are to put the Ark of the Testimony there, and screen off the Ark with the curtain.

Then as we read through the rest of Exodus 40 we see a similar breakdown as we saw in Exodus 39 with there being sectioned breakdowns of the work as it was being done. And just like we see with Exodus 39, with each section describing the work that was being done it is followed with the phrase K’kol Asher tzivah Adonai oto kein asa, “just as Adonai had commanded him.”

And here again we see something very interesting, this phrase occurs seven times in chapter 40 in describing that Moses did everything just as HaShem commanded him. This occurs seven times, just as Adonai took seven days to create everything. (We see this in chapter 40 verses 16, 19, 21, 25, 26, 29, and 32.)

These seven times we see of the Torah specifically describing Moses doing the work exactly as Adonai commanded is then followed by the Lord’s own sort of declaration of this act of recreation being very good.

Exodus 40:33–35 TLV

He set up the courtyard around the Tabernacle and the altar and set up the screen at the gate of the courtyard. So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of Adonai filled the Tabernacle. Moses was unable to enter into the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud resided there and the glory of Adonai filled the Tabernacle.

The JPS Torah commentary on Exodus says this about the Shechinah resting upon the Mishkan:

“The function of the Tabernacle was to create a portable Sinai, a means by which a continued avenue of communication with God could be maintained. As the people move away from the mount of revelation, they need a visible, tangible symbol of God’s ever-abiding Presence in their midst. It is not surprising, then, that the same phenomenon as occurred at Sinai, related in Exodus 24:15-17, now repeats itself. It will recur at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple, as is narrated in 1 Kings 8:10-11. The cloud is the manifest token of the immediacy of the Divine Presence.”

Now, all of this is vitally important because in order for Moses and B’nei Yisrael to create a habitation for the Presence of the Lord to dwell among His creation they had to follow precise specifications. They had to do everything exactly as the Lord revealed to Moses on the Mountain. Another way to word this would be in order for Israel to be a dwelling place for the Presence of Adonai they had to be obedient and accountable to the Word of the Lord. This is specifically why we see this interaction with the creation narrative in Parasha Pekudei. In a way, this is an act of redemption of both the Golden Calf scenario and the fall of humanity creating a barrier between God’s Presence and His creation.

One of the most important realities that should be present in the life of a follower of Yeshua is obedience and accountability to the Word of the Lord.

See, when God created the world, when God spoke all things into existence—including mankind—He did so for the distinct purpose of His Presence dwelling with us. I think this is specifically seen in the fact that Adonai came to walk with Adam and Chava in the middle of the day in the Garden, and I highly doubt this was the first time this had occured which is why they decided to hide when they realized they were naked. They realized they had done something wrong and were trying to cover up their actions.Kind of like when I hear crashing sound from my kids’ room and go to check on them and find out what the noise was and they’re sitting their with the proverbial “deer in a headlights look” and with whatever fell sitting in the middle of the floor and they quickly say, “I don’t know what happened...”

But because of humanity’s sin Adonai could no longer dwell with us in the same way He had up to that point. We could no longer have free access to the Divine Presence. At Mount Sinai we see a dramatic shift to this reality when God reveals His Shechinah to Israel and speaks directly to them. Then we build and worship the Golden Calf and put God through the same mess we did in the Garden… Our actions were, in essence, an action of rejecting the Presence of God yet again, whether B’nei Yisrael realized it fully or not. And because of the Golden Calf the Lord wanted to remove His Presence from us once again.

But what was it that was ultimately the problem at hand? Was it not the fact that Israel was not being obedient and accountable to the Word of God? And just like with Adam and Chava who God spoke directly to when He said you can eat freely of any plant in the Garden, just don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or you will die. Then they chose to reject His Word because of the temptation of the enemy.

We see the same exact scenario with Israel and the Golden Calf at Mount Sinai. God specifically told Israel to have know God’s aside from Him...

Exodus 20:1–6 TLV

Then God spoke all these words saying, “I am Adonai your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. “You shall have no other gods before Me. Do not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or on the earth below or in the water under the earth. Do not bow down to them, do not let anyone make you serve them. For I, Adonai your God, am a jealous God, bringing the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to the thousands of generations of those who love Me and keep My mitzvot.

And what is it Israel does? The reject the Word of the Lord and build and worship the Golden Calf. And just like Adam and Chava who reject the Word of God right in front of Him (as the purpose to the Garden was to dwell in His Presence), Israel rejects the Word of the Lord right in front of Him too… Very literally at the base of Mount Sinai where they encountered the Shechinah and Bat Kol in the first place, and where they could still see the Shechinah upon the mountain right in front of Him…

So when Adonai commands Israel to build the Mishkan, a means of reestablishing His literal Presence dwelling with His creation once again, He is very specific with the blue prints, very specific with the details of how it should be done. And it is obvious that Israel actually really wanted His Presence to dwell with us because the Torah tells us that they were very intentional to do everything exactly as God commanded through Moses.

To be exact, as with the story of creation which was intended to be a habitation for the Lord which was a seven day process, the act of building the Mishkan which was intended to be a habitation for the Presence of the Lord we see the pattern of seven again. Seven times in chapter 39 does the Torah specifically say Israel did everything Ka’asher tzivah Adonai et-Moshe, “as Adonai commanded Moses.”

And, as any good leader should do, Moses leads by example and we see that in chapter 40 we see the pattern of seven all over again as Moses is assembling the Mishkan as seven times the Torah says Moses did everything K’kol Asher tzivah Adonai oto kein asa, “just as Adonai had commanded him.”

And the number seven is a spiritually significant number in Judaism. Seven is the number of completion, of perfection, and it is viewed as a sacred number. We see the number seven is significant in the story of creation, there are seven days in a week biblically ordained as six days of labor and the seventh-day Shabbat, there are seven branches on the Ner Tamid, the eternal light or the Menorah that stood in the Temple, we see the Sheva Berechot in the Jewish wedding ceremony, we see the Sh’mitah cycle which is six years of working the land and the seventh year the land is to rest, and the Yovel cycle which is seven cycles of Sh’mitah years and the 50th year is the Yovel.

Rabbi Alexandre Safran concludes his prolific discussion of “Jewish time/Sabbath time” in his Israel in Time & Space by noting that, the number seven thus joins for all eternity the Creator and His Creation, God and His people; and the hyphen uniting them, is the holy Shabbat.

So the Torah specifying that Israel is being obedient to the Word of the Lord, and specifically in preparing a dwelling place for the Shechinah of HaShem, and doing so seven times, then repeating the pattern again with Moses assembling the Mishkan is a tremendous spiritual reality as it points us to the actual act of the building of the Tabernacle being a reenactment with Creation—a reestablishing of Adonai dwelling among men again.

But, in order for His Presence to dwell in our midst there was a necessity for obedience and accountability. We see the reality of their this in Exodus being specific in mentioning that they did everything as prescribed by God through Moses, and not saying it just once, but seven times in describing Israel’s work in Exodus 39 and seven times again in Exodus 40 in describing Moses’ work.

One of the most important realities that should be present in the life of a follower of Yeshua is obedience and accountability to the Word of the Lord.

This idea of obedience and accountability is huge in our discipleship today. The reality is that as followers of Yeshua we are called to emulate Him and the disciples, we are called to live as they lived and be faithful as they were faithful. And a significant part of this is obedience to the Word of God, and not just the Torah and not just to the Brit Chadashah. Obedient and accountable to the entirety of the Word of God from Genesis through Revelation. And the only way we can even remotely come close to do so is through the indwelling of the Ruach HaKodesh.

John 14:15–19 TLV

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper so He may be with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him. You know Him, because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not abandon you as orphans; I will come to you. In a little while, the world will no longer behold Me, but you will behold Me. Because I live, you also will live!

Yeshua tells us a Helper will come, the Ruach HaKodesh to be specific, and reside with us. It is important to understand the choice of the word “Helper” here as a descriptor of the Ruach. See, Israel has had the Torah, and more so the Tanakh, for quite some time by the time Yeshua begins His ministry, and for all the generations we have had the Torah we have not been very good at obedience and accountability. We see this throughout 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles and the Prophets… Even though we had the Torah in our possession, a blueprint of how to live in relationship with the Lord we still messed everything up over and over and over again. And mostly because, just like my Great Dane, we have a tendency to try to push the boundaries over and over and over again… And if at all possible, we will try our hardest to straight up pick up the boundaries and moved them completely.

But as followers of Yeshua, both Jew and non-Jew alike, we have been empowered with the indwelling of the Ruach HaKodesh, our divine helper Who inspired the authorship of the Word of God and Who can help us to be fully devoted and fully submitted to the Word of the Lord.

James 1:22–25 TLV

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror— for once he looks at himself and goes away, he immediately forgets what sort of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect Torah, the Torah that gives freedom, and continues in it, not becoming a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts—he shall be blessed in what he does.

And again in James 2…

James 2:14–26 TLV

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works? Can such faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in shalom, keep warm and well fed,” but you do not give them what the body needs, what good is that? So also faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith without works and I will show you faith by my works. You believe that God is one. You do well. The demons also believe—and shudder! But do you want to know, you empty person, that faith without works is dead? Wasn’t Abraham our father proved righteous by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith worked together with his works, and by the works his faith was made complete. The Scripture was fulfilled that says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”—and he was called God’s friend. You see that a man is proved righteous by works and not by faith alone. And likewise, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute also proved righteous by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out another way? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

Just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead…

See, the Body today has this messed up notion that once we proclaim a “repeat after me” prayer have arrived… We have done all that is necessary and we are covered. The Body as a whole has this idea that Grace and Mercy has freed us from obedience and accountability. But if you take away anything at all from Parasha Pekudei today it should be that without obedience and accountability we are missing out on preparing ourselves as a dwelling place, a Mishkan, for the Presence of God. We are robbing ourselves of the fullness of the Glory of God in our lives, we are robbing ourselves of the fullness of discipleship in Yeshua HaMashiach.

One of the most important realities that should be present in the life of a follower of Yeshua is obedience and accountability to the Word of the Lord.

And listen, I don’t want anyone to get confused about what I’m saying here, none of this is about your salvation being tied to your actions… We can’t earn Salvation… Our Salvation is in the Blood of the Lamb alone, freely given to all who call upon the Name of Yeshua! But the Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, is a guidebook for what a truly devoted live in Yeshua is suppose to look like. Salvation makes possible the indwelling of the Ruach HaKodesh, and the Ruach HaKodesh enables us to be faithful to the Word of God so that we can maintain ourselves as a holy dwelling place, a Mishkan.

You

Where do you find your walk with the Lord today? Are a recreated dwelling place for the Presence of the Lord? Are you walking in obedience and accountability to the Lord daily? Are you fully submitted to the Word of God and the leading of the Ruach HaKodesh? Can you say that you are walking out your discipleship today Ka’asher tzivah Adonai et-Moshe v’et-Yeshua, as Adonai commanded through Moses and Yeshua? Or are you still trying to push the boundaries, trying to figure out just how much of the world you can maintain and still call yourself a believer?

We

If our worship team will make their way back up to the stage. (Unmute the worship team)

As I close today I want us to remember this one thing, the entire purpose to the Mishkan was to be a reestablishment of the Presence of God dwelling among His creation again. But it required faithful and Ruach-led action by Israel to prepare Him a holy dwelling place, obedience and accountability. In the same sense, as followers of Yeshua HaMashiach we have been recreated into a dwelling place for the Presence of God, and as such His Ruach HaKodesh which is the literally indwelling of His Presence has been given to us to help us maintain a holy dwelling place through obedience and accountability. What we learn from the Torah is that we couldn’t be obedient and accountable on our own.

What we should learn from the Brit Chadashah is that the same Holy God who called us to build Him a Holy Dwelling has now called us through Messiah to become His Holy Dwelling and He has placed His Ruach HaKodesh within us to make up the difference between our best effort and His holy expectation.

Most of the Body for the majority of the last 2000 years has thought that Yeshua came to free us from the need to be obedient and accountable, but the reality is He is still calling us to be obedient and accountable and through Yeshua the Lord has given us a helper (the Ruach) to empower us to be obedient and accountable so that we can be a holy dwelling place for His Presence and through His indwelling we can draw others to His recreation in Salvation.