Daily Devotions
Make All Things According to the Pattern
Title: Make All Things According to the Pattern
Reading for January 23: Exodus 24-27
"And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it."
Exodus 25:8-9
Just as God gave specific instructions for Moses to build a tabernacle, we have been given patterns for us to follow.
We have been given a pattern for how to worship. When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, he rebuked them for their abuses of the Lord's Supper. Why? Because they had been given a pattern. He said, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you..." (1 Corinthians 11:23). What Paul had "delivered" to them concerning the Lord's Supper were not mere suggestions from the Lord. They were specific patterns to be followed.
But as important as it is that we follow the pattern of corporate worship, it is equally as important that we follow the pattern of private morality and personal holiness. Earlier in the same letter the apostle Paul rebuked the Corinthians for their attitude about sexual immorality. And at the end of his rebuke he makes this bold statement, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." (1 Cor 6:19-20)
The point is that God's presence is not contained to a physical location anymore (Jn 4:23-24) or to some sanctified structure we call a church building. If it is important that we get the details of the pattern right in a place we meet in a handful of times a week right (and it most certainly is!), how much more important is it that we get the pattern right for the way we live in our bodies in which God dwells all week long?
Father, may you be glorified in all we do, whether it be in our corporate worship or in our private lives before you.
