The Tabernacle's mobility was not simply pragmatic. When God began to replace Mt. Sinai by dictating instructions for an elaborate man-made structure, God was sacrificing a bit. Sinai was God-made. Sinai burned with fire and reached up to heaven. Sinai made his holiness clear to all Israel.
To give up such strengths in his first PLACE since Eden, God must have stood to gain something else in the exchange.
Certainly, if Israel was going to move on to Canaan, they would have to leave Sinai eventually. Obviously, God wanted to go with them. However, the Tabernacle's mobility was not simply expedient. When God decided his house on Earth was going to have the ability to move around, that decision was NOT primarily focused on accommodating the needs of his people.
It would seem there was something about Motion that GOD desired to see expressed in the nature of his Earthly Home. It would seem God wanted to see his home have a way to be moved... by Him.
The Tabernacle goes back to the first thing we noted, in Eternity past. God moves. God is moving. God is always at rest, but God is always in motion as well. The Movement of God on the Earth is as old as the Spirit's first fluttering over the waves. God is dynamic. God does not change, but God instigates change. God creates. God makes Life. God calls forth multiplication.
God acts within History.
Although God does not change, although Eden was built to last, although God's Law continues to stand, although God still wants ALL the things God has wanted since always... God's very being is also dynamic.
The IAMWHOAM moved his Jacob to Egypt, moved his Moses to Sinai, and moved his people - before they were punished - to a whole year of wanderings. Then God moved his own Earthly home... and came to live in a tent. And by doing that, God made it clear that He Himself had the power - and reserved the prerogative - to pack up and pick up at any time He desired and to move on along!
It was God who broke camp, at Mount Sinai, because HE felt the time had arrived when his Testimony was ready to be carried forwards. For the Movement of God is when God moves, and that is all that matters.
So then, what was the Tabernacle?
God had wanted to make manifest an Earthly rendition of His one holy place and yet, perhaps because Earth was still NOT Heaven, God also wanted to stay free to move. And so, God made a way to do both.
In the form of the Tabernacle, beginning there in the Nomadic wanderings of Israel, the - take note - THE very Movement of God, on the face of the Earth... did two things.
It continued. And, to all human awareness, it began.
To be continued...
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