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Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain Exodus 35:2:
The Sabbath During the Day of TemptationExodus 35:1-3
Excerpted from: The Fourth Commandment: IdolatryBeginning in verse 12 is a special covenant: the Sabbath covenant. Everybody recognizes it as such. This special covenant comes right in the midst of the instruction regarding the building of the Tabernacle in the wilderness.
We just saw in Exodus 31 a special Sabbath covenant, but it is important that you notice this in light of what is going on in the larger context. The context is the instruction that God gave to Moses for the building of the Tabernacle. Even though these people were employed by God to construct the most important edifice that, to that time in their lives, they had ever constructed, and it was going to require a great deal of their time and effort, and it was directly connected to their devoted worship of God.
Exodus 35 makes very clear that they were not to desecrate the Sabbath—this holy time—by working on it. The issuance of that special reminder is there because they had already shown they were really eager to do it, and so in order to caution them and slow them down, He said, "Wait a minute! When the Sabbath comes, it's more important than that building."
I am sure that this was hard for some people to understand, because a building you could see. "Look at what I'm building there! That shows I love God. I am devoted to Him." God said they were not to do any work on the Sabbath day, that this space of time was more important than that building. He said, "You are not to build a fire." The fire of course would have been intended by them to do work melting metal so they could do their decorations and so forth, making nuts and bolts for putting together the Tabernacle. God said "No. The Sabbath is more important than that building. Don't you dare work on it."
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