Sea Cow Hides? Seriously?

In the post Chicken Suit for the Soul I suggest that nearly anything can be used for God's glory and to advance His kingdom. What about the hide of a sea cow?

Sea cow hides turn up in Exodus 25:1-9 for what might be the first shopping list recorded in history:

The Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering. You are to receive the offering for me from each man whose heart prompts him to give. These are the offerings you are to receive from them: gold, silver and bronze; blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair; ram skins dyed red and hides of sea cows; acacia wood; olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece.

“Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you."

Moses has been on Mt. Sinai with the Lord for forty days receiving detailed instructions for two main things:

1) The Law, instructions for living and worship, which will be the cornerstone for much of the western world's justice system for thousands of years.

2) Blue prints for construction of the tabernacle, God's own dwelling place with man on earth. In the history of blue prints and architectural drawings, this set is arguably the most important among millions of buildings. Because, you know, this is the house for the Almighty Sovereign Lord of the Universe.

But sandwiched between these two monumental set of instructions to Moses, God slips in a shopping list. I'm picturing a dad handing over the minivan keys to his 16 year old son on the way to the grocery store, "Ok Moses, we need gold, silver, bronze, flour, sugar, milk, eggs, sea cow hides..."














And then Moses looks up from scribbling on the back of his envelope.

"Sea Cow Hides??? Seriously???" God nods.

This has always been a chin-scratcher for me. I understand the gold and silver, because you want the living place of God to be dazzling. But sea cow hides? Really? Maybe it has some amazing water-repellent qualities, or wicks moisture, or is super tough. Or maybe God just cracks up at this funky cow/whale/vacuum machine creature as some inside joke with the Trinity.

God intended the sea cow hides to be coverings for some of the holy things of the tabernacle during transport through the desert. So if not an inside joke then I think that sea cows are small link in a huge chain of the theme of coverings in the Bible. Here's just a quick survey of the theme.

Covering After the Fall
One of the first acts of Adam and Eve after the fall was to cover their nakedness (Gen 3:7). Using fig leaves, they sewed together a covering. My guess is that "leaves" are more than a few points lower than sea cow hide on the covering quality scale (CQS). Later, after the curses and consequences were meted out for their sin, God gives them an upgrade in their coverings and makes new ones out of animal skins (Gen 3:21).


Covering in the Desert
When God delivered Israel from Egypt He instructed Moses to build a tabernacle where His holy presence could dwell among a sinful, rebellious nation. In a sense, the tabernacle (along with the elaborate complex of rituals) was a protective covering so that the Israelites would not get torched by the glory of God's presence. Perhaps like heavenly oven mitts to keep the people from getting burned by the all consuming fire. The sea cow hides were just one image of this as the holy thing were set apart, sanctified, by being covered.

But I think that the tabernacle was not just a protective covering for the sake of the safety of the people, but also a picture of God's desire to be wrapped in the people He loves. God surrounded Himself in the desert with tribes of Israelites encamped all around. From the perspective of God, it looks like He is covering Himself with people like a cloak. A filthy, stained garment, but one that He will be making new and cleansing white as snow.


Covering of the Incarnation
In the incarnation, God the Son took on a human nature. Jesus was more than just God in a body. He became fully human while still being fully God. But God took on a covering of flesh and blood, he tabernacled among us in while he walked the earth. We need to be careful because there are a thousand errors to easily fall into when discussing the incarnation. If you put a sandwich into a Tupperware container, the two are still distinct. When Jesus was born, he wasn't just covered with flesh and bones like Saran Wrap, he actually BECAME human while still retaining his divinity.

But there is still a theme of covering: Jesus' glory was veiled, his kingly majesty was covered with humility, his glorious power was hidden beneath his role of suffering servant.

Covering on the Cross
On the cross Jesus took on our sin as a cruel, torturous covering. The sins of all people for all time for all places was placed on him. Then he was covered with the wrath of God to atone for our sin. He was covered with his own blood, shed for our redemption.

Covering of the Holy Spirit
After Jesus returned to his glory at the resurrection, the Father sent the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts. Christians become the temple of the Holy Spirit, we are the covering for God. This is incredible. In the Old Testament the sea cow hide is used to cover the holy things from a sinful people. In the New Testament, sinful people are redeemed then become a covering for the Holy Spirit.


Our Covering in Eternity
When we enter the eternal kingdom there seems to be a reversal. Humans go from being the temple of God the Holy Spirit, to God becoming the temple, our eternal covering. Revelation 21:22-27 is awesome:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

While the infinite God was confined and covered by the cramped desert tabernacle in the Old Testament, limited and finite people will inhabit and be covered by the temple of the eternal God in the kingdom.

Sea cow hides? Seriously? Seriously.

The Center

Numbers chapter 2 pictures the order and arrangement of the tribes of Israel encamping around the tabernacle. God is at the very center of their lives, everything emanating from that core, all activity moves out from the very presence of God.

There were three tribes camped on each side of the tabernacle and the Levites scattered around as well.

God's presence was not only the center and heart of the camp, but also the center of the tabernacle. Within the tabernacle there were different levels of access and closeness to God moving from the outer courts to the Holy Place and finally into the Holiest of Holies:

And inside the Holiest of Holies, was the ark. And inside the Ark was the covenant, the tablets given by God to Moses. And on top of the Ark was the mercy seat, where the very presence of God rested.

Mercy was at the heart of the Israelites whole order, resting over the tablets of the covenant, God's very Word. Their whole life was centered on this, literally.

The question is: Shouldn't our lives also be centered on God? With God at the heart of our devotion, our daily lives? Our waking and sleeping? Our thoughts and energies? Life gets busy and we have obligations, but does the Lord get sidelined and the things of this world take center stage, the place of honor, the most sacred space in our lives? What is sacred to us and set apart as special? What do we sacrifice on behalf of that sacred hobby, sacred job, sacred TV show, sacred relationship, sacred obsession?

In the tabernacle everything was bathed with the blood of sacrificed animals as people get closer to the Presence of God, hidden behind a curtain in the most holy place. A sinful people needed almost 100 rules for 1 man once per year to enter the Holiest of Holies to approach the Holy God. Failure to approach God without the protection of the sacrifices was deadly.

But we have been permanently brought near to God by one sacrifice. By even 1 drop of Jesus' blood countless people dwell in the center of God's presence for 100 million years and then some. Do we avail ourselves of the blood of Jesus to boldly approach the throne of grace (Heb 4:16) and find mercy and grace? The veil of the tabernacle has been ripped in two from top to bottom, and we can at any time enter into the center of the throne room, the presence of God.

In the desert some people had to be removed from the camp for various conditions making them unclean: disease, wrong offerings, eating blood of an animal, etc. When they were unclean or disobedient they were moved farther from God's presence, farther from the center.

Some people, like lepers, had to live outside the camp. They were unclean. They were sent away from the center (Num 5:1) so they wouldn't defile the place where God dwells.

And as disgusting as leprosy is, our sin is worse before God. If we were to see our sinful condition in bodily form, it would shock and horrify us. We would seem to be as disfigured as the latest stage leper who is nearly beyond recognition from his intended form.

Jesus healed lepers and touched them. But in a greater miracle, God sees believers through the imputed righteousness of Jesus. He doesn't see a disfigured and corrupted person, but one wholly righteous, clothed in white, and washed by the blood of the lamb. We have been made clean (justified) and are being made clean (sanctified). We are drawn to the center.

But when we sin, we distance ourselves from God. Christians are never assigned to the place of unbelievers but are not always in intimate communion and relationship. We move away from the center.

In the desert some people were aliens, outside of the chosen people, not even within site of the camp. Lost and utterly depraved (Lev 20:1-5 for example). There were whole communities and generations that did not even know that God called a chosen people, that He performed mighty wonders and miracles, that He delivered them from slavery with wondrous powers. How many people lived so far from the center of God's presence that they missed his glory? Never heard His thunder from the mountain? Never knew his name? Never covered their ears from the booming thunder blasts of Sinai, or shielded their eyes from the furious lightning? But instead were sacrificing their children in fire to the demon god Molech? How many? These were the people whose sexual sin was so deplorable that the very land was spoiled and defiled beneath them (Lev 18:25, 27). How bad must one's sin be before the earth that you stand on is corrupted? Like a poison that drips from a cup to the waters of a well, seeping deep, utterly corrupting it. Or, as in the Lev 18:28 text, like a rotten meat in the stomach, so that the stomach will vomit to purge itself clean. These people were very far from the center.

We're tempted to think of sin that bad as belonging to others, in a different time and different place. After all, which of us has sacrificed our child to an idol?

But we often underestimate the revulsion of our own sin to God and its consequences . Consider that the one single sin of Adam (eating fruit) was foul enough to spread death, decay and destruction to all of mankind, infecting billions of souls through thousands of years. That even nature itself and the natural order would be defiled and ruined. So much so that in order to redeem man He would need to destroy his body and give him an entirely new body (corruptible putting on incorruption) and the heavens and earth would need to be reformed.

Yet only by looking through the lens of our sin and its depravity can we fully appreciate the magnitude of the love and grace of God. Where sin abounded, grace super-abounded. We usually look at the arrangement of the camp around the tabernacle from our perspective, teaching us to keep God at the center of our lives. But when you look at it from the perspective of God, sitting on the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies we see that God intentionally surrounded himself with fallen people, those of the would-be redeemed.

Despite the fallen nature of Israel, God the Father placed his majesty in their midst in the Holiest of Holies and surrounded Himself with 12 tribes of sinful men, wrapping them around himself like a dirty tattered cloak after setting aside His royal robes in the heavenly places. A material tabernacle housing God in the center of a sinful but chosen people.

And in the same way God the Son set aside his heavenly glory and wrapped himself in human flesh and lived among the throng of sinful man. Subjecting himself to the weariness, sorrow, pain, temptation in the center of humanity's depravity. A human tabernacle housed God among a sinful world. God the Son dwelling among men.

And then once again, today and in the church age, God the Holy Spirit lives in the hearts of Christian believers whose bodies become the tabernacle (temple) of God, yet still sinful and corrupt though justified and being sanctified. God the Spirit dwelling within a man.

There is a progression of intimacy of the triune God dwelling among man:

1) Father in a Tabernacle in the desert: separation by walls, curtains and ritual; Only one man, once per year could enter the presence of God. God was seen, but only rarely and in limited expression.

2) Son assuming a human body: separation from others by physical distance. Thousands were in the presence of Jesus, the God-man. But most still were not. There was no veil or tabernacle shielding God from sinful man other than his flesh. But people could touch him, crowds pressed in tight. A woman was healed by touching his cloak. For a moment on the mount of transfiguration the veil was pulled back just a smidgeon and the glory of the Son was revealed to Peter an John.

3) Spirit living in the hearts of Christians: millions (billions?) of people have the presence of God inside of them. God dwelling inside the believers in the most intimate arrangement possible. At times we grieve and quench the Holy Spirit by sin in our lives, like covering burning coals with a wet, wool blanket. Not extinguishing the Spirit, but also not fanning into flame.

This whole progression demonstrates the deep loving heart of God, his intense desire to be intimately at the center of humanity. The tabernacle in the desert is a great picture of God dwelling among men. He WANTS DESPERATELY to live among us. How much so? That he would kill His own son that we might be brought ever nearer and closer.

The CS Lewis book "The Great Divorce" has an interesting and relevant image of hell: a community of people that keep moving farther and farther away from each other and from God. Whereas God wanted to draw Israel in tight, the weight and gravity of His love pulling them in, those who reject God drift farther and farther off, severed from the draw of His presence and ever receding into the vanishing distance.

Why should God be the center of our lives? Because He wants to look out and around to see a circle of those He redeemed by Jesus' blood encamped about him.

More in The Center, Part 2.

God's Carny (Numbers Chapter 8)

In Numbers 8, God claims the Levite tribe of Israel to be His own possession, dedicated wholly to Him as helpers in the work of the tabernacle and assistants to Aaron and his sons, the priests. These Levites didn't perform the actual offerings, or sacrifice the bulls, that was the job of the priests. But they did all of the hard work: setting up and taking down the tabernacle, herding animals, crowd control, dumping out the ashes from the incense bowls. We can safely say that a Levite was God's carny.

The analogy isn't stretched that much, they even set up and took down a giant tent in the desert!  If God wanted to have a Tilt O' Whirl or  Zany Zipper, the Levites would have operated the rides.

A carny is usually among the dregs of society, an outcast, somebody with a past more checkered than the Daytona 500, felons definitely encouraged to apply. Genesis 34:25-31 and 49:5-7 are all the resume that the Levites needed for the job position.

But the Levites were not any worse than the other tribes of Israel.  The entire nation of Israel was a bunch of misfits, grumblers, rebels, and whiners (to be blunt).  Randomly point your finger to any verse in Exodus and you're very lucky to not have somebody moaning that the porridge is both too hot and too cold at the same time.  Flip eyes-closed to any passage in the Old Testament and God is probably either about to bring Israel to the woodshed, or Israel is returning from the woodshed, backside smarting.

And before us Gentiles get too smug, sneering down our "holier than thou" noses, it is clear that the Israelites were not worse than the rest of the nations.  All of humanity is in the dregs, bottom of the barrel. We all are cast out from the garden, wanderers in an alien land, orphaned from our Father in Heaven.  Every one of us. Sure, we might not have teeth missing, tats, an original Iron Maiden jeans jacket,  and a mobile home in the Bellis Fair Mall parking lot 2 weeks out of the year.  But which one of us would like the innermost recesses of our minds broadcast 24/7 for the world to hear, or thought bubbles to appear over our heads for the world to see? Not me because sometimes it's uglier than the Bearded Lady.    If not outwardly, then at least in our inner man, all of us are carnies.  It's even appropriate that the apostle Paul urges us to avoid the sins of the flesh.  In the Greek it's the sins of the "sarkikos" the carnal nature.

Romans 7:14 "For I know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin."

Good news is that once we are saved, God justifies us and sanctifies us as we put off the old man, put to death the sins of the flesh,  and put on the new man in the likeness of Jesus.   But it is entirely by God's work and grace in us that we have any hope of renewal.

So for any human being to occupy even a cotton candy stand in the carnival of God's kingdom is a huge score.  Give me a push broom next to the eternal Fun House or Hall O' Mirrors and I'm good.   It's a promotion. Or, as Jesus put it in Matthew 11:11 "I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."  Anybody up for some bumper cars?