Exodus 25 and 26 involve the making of what God calls a sanctuary for Him so that He may dwell among the people. If you remember God had the Israelites take many things from the Egyptians and now He is asking for some of them to be used for Him. In these chapters God gives instructions for the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle which will house the ark as well as many other accoutrements used for worship. This is one grand worship space: the finest cloth, the finest woods, gold covering everything, brilliant jewels…a place befitting God’s presence.

The one sentence that intrigues me is Ex. 25:2. God has Moses tell the people to give an offering and he will receive the offering “from all whose hearts prompt them to give.” Sometimes churches think that it would be good to charge dues to their membership to guarantee giving. There are some faith groups that even do this. But, here, God wants the gifts to be prompted by the heart. God has heard the people’s promise to have a relationship with Him and to obey His commands and now He trusts that they will be moved to respond. While in other places He asks for the firstfruits or firstborn, at this time he asks for them to give as they are prompted. Giving is our offering for the privilege of having a God who wants to dwell with us.

Matthew 27 opens with the arrest of Jesus because of Judas’ betrayal. Judas repents and tries to return the money he was paid. The priests do not accept the money, but Judas throws it down and is driven by his guilt ot hang himself. The priests recognize that this money is sinful and in a feeble attempt to appease their own guilt they use the money to buy a field for the burial of foreigners.

The priests take Jesus to the governor, Pilate. He sees that they have brought Jesus for trial out of jealousy and gives them an option of killing either Jesus or a murderer, Barabbas. The priests convince the crowd to ask for Barabbas’ release. When Pilate asks what he should do with Jesus, they say to crucify him. Pilate states that Jesus is innocent and the people agree to have Jesus’ blood on their hands. All this time Jesus says nothing in his defense.

The soldiers who take Jesus to be crucified dress him in a scarlet robe and place a crown of thorns on his head. They mock him as the King of the Jews. This is done as much to upset the priests as it is to degrade Jesus. The soldiers try to give Jesus wine mixed with gall to relieve some of the pain involved in crucifixion but Jesus refuses. He will bear all the pain without relief. Jesus is taunted by all those around the cross, even the bandits who are hung with him and he remains silent.

Finally Jesus cries out to God. He has borne the sins of all those who surround him, he has borne the sins of all those who have come before and he has borne our sins as well. God must turn His back on such sin. Jesus knows that He, at this moment, is completely alone, without God’s presence. And Jesus died.

There is a veil in the temple that surrounds the Holy of Holies, where God dwells. At Jesus’ death the veil is split and all of God’s glory is available for everyone to see. The earth shook with God’s judgment. Even the centurion watching Jesus realizes that something extraordinary is happening. He admits that Jesus is God’s Son.

While there is no mention of Jesus’ disciples being present at the crucifixion, Matthew does say that some of the women who followed Jesus were there. They remained faithful even when the others fled.

Jesus was placed in the tomb of a wealthy man and a large stone was rolled in front of the tomb. The priests and Pharisees have Pilate put guards in front of the tomb to make sure no one steals the body away since Jesus had said he would rise after three days.

We often wonder how such evil could happen, and yet we are confronted daily with those who make one wrong choice after another. They are deluded into believing that these choices are necessary for some sort of good that only they can see. These choices snowball into larger and larger disasters which affect many lives. Jesus chose to succumb to the wrong decisions in order to transform them into something of a much greater purpose. We must pray that God intervenes when we set out on the wrong course so that everything will work for good and those that have been hurt will be healed and saved.