Following God's Will

For a long time, these two chapters (Exodus 37 and 38) have puzzled me. Exodus already describes all of these elements of Jewish worship earlier in chapters 25-27 and 30, so why would God have them repeated? How was this particularly relevant even for future generations of Israelites, much less modern-day Christians? And then, I was reminded of King Saul. 1 Samuel 15 tells of how Saul followed MOST of God's commands, but because he did not follow ALL of them he was harshly rejected by the Lord and immediately thereafter God sends Samuel to anoint David as the new king. This reflects why God included the repetition of such meticulous (and to many modern readers excessive) details in Exodus 37 and 38--as well as throughout many other chapters of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, even though I use only Ex. 37-38 in this example. God wants 100% of His will to be done. He wants nothing to be neglected, not even the smallest detail. To us, the exact dimensions of the ark may not seem important other than for historical purposes. But to God, this was His holy will, and as such needed to be paid an extraordinary amount of intention. God chose for the ark to be 2.5 cubits long and if Bezalel did not make it exactly 2.5 cubits long, he would have been rejecting God and God's will just as much as his fellow Israelites had recently done when they worshiped the golden calf. The same is true of us today. God wants us to follow His will exactly and so even in the minutest details of our day-to-day lives, we still need to seek His prompting, His guidance, and act entirely and exclusively according to His will.

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