New Year: Ex 35-37 for Jan 27

Look out! You'll miss it if you tend to skip "details!" God and the Israelites start the honeymoon here! (in fact starting with Ex 34:10, including our chapters for today.)

Just as there are "Ten Commandments" in 34:28, refering to the original ones in Ex 20, there are ten "you shall" or "you shall not" sentences in the covenant God makes starting in 34:10. These are 34:14,17,18,20,20,21,22,25,26,26. Moses was commanded to write those down. God, on His part, includes them in a covenant with Moses and Israel (34:27). It's interesting to hear that God makes this covenant with Moses and Israel.

Jeremiah 2:2-3. "The Love of your Betrothals." That's here. Going now from all "the things that the LORD has command you to do," the whole collection (35:1), to specific things (35:4), is a good thing. The people shine here. They get something to do. Something to work on. This is always a good thing in a relationship, rather than staring at each other (35:20).

Not only did things start to work. Things started to work -- from the heart (35:21-29).

Things continued to work (36:3-6). And then, quietly, with little fanfare, the work went on in chapter 36 of building, according to Ex 26 patterns, which the reader notices, but doesn't. When something is going well, according to plan, it's possible to for the reader to read chapter 36 without hardly noticing the correspondence to Ex 26:1-4, 26:15-29, and 26:36-37. Perhaps it was also done so that Bezalel and Oholiab could whistle while they worked. Same with Chapter 37 and Exodus 25 and 30.

One application to our lives could be in this simple observation of the details of these chapters. When something is going wrong, do we not often dwell on all the details of it, even if not trying to fix it? But when something is going right, do we skip the details? Are we a people more enamored with our failings, than when we do well? Why should we be?