Building the Tabernacle, By William Haines 17/07/2011

Fine linen, goat hair, ram skins dyed red, and another type of durable leather, acacia wood, olive oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and the breast piece. 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. This was what God said to Moses about building the Tabernacle. If we think about it, where the Hebrews were at this time, they had just received the Ten Commandments and made the Covenant with God. Before that, they were living in Egypt. What kind of life were they living? Was it a happy life or a difficult life? Yeah, suffering. They were slaves. So what is it like to be a slave? Is it very nice? No, it means you have to do as you're told every day. You have no freedom to decide where you're going to live, what kind of job you're going to do, how you're going to organize your life. You just have a master, and he owns you. You belong to him, and you just do as you're told every day. It's very easy then to develop a slave mentality where you no longer think for yourself; you're just waiting to be told what to do. God wasn't too happy with this. The Hebrews, though they were slaves in Egypt, maintained their identity as Hebrews. They had been living there for about 400 years. The reason why they ended up there in the first place was because of the mistake that Abraham made in the offering. They ended up in Egypt for 400 years, and during that time, they had to maintain their identity as Hebrews, as a people of God. What kind of temptations do you think they faced? When you're living in a foreign, strange land, you can assimilate. You can think, 'Do I really want to be this immigrant community, or do I want to get on in this life and adapt and assimilate and get on like everybody else?' Do I want to be different and treated differently, or do I want to assimilate and integrate into society and become one of them? When Pharaoh started to reduce the Hebrews to slavery, many of them probably thought, 'Do I want to become a slave, or maybe I should just change my citizenship and take out an Egyptian passport? Instead of being a slave, I can become one of the rulers, one of the slave drivers.' That was a choice that a lot of them faced. Nobody knows how many decided to become Egyptians and how many decided to remain as Hebrews, but that's obviously the kind of temptation they were facing. If during those 400 years they'd all assimilated, who would have been left to bring out of Egypt? There would have been nobody left. Who would have won? Satan would have won. God would no longer have his people; they would have all assimilated, and there would be nobody to bring out of Egypt to settle and live in Canaan. So they were successful in that sense; they maintained their identity. Moses came, and they left Egypt and crossed over the desert. Who was it that did these extraordinary things? That was God working. There were the ten plagues and calamities, extraordinary phenomena that took place. Some of them probably thought, 'Wow, that's amazing! That's God working.' Some of them thought, 'Wow, this is an amazing environmental catastrophe that's taking place.' Others may have thought, 'Well, this is a nice coincidence.' When we read the Bible, we read it as if God did this, but if you were a Hebrew and saw these amazing things take place, you might think some saw it as God, some as just an environmental catastrophe, and others as a coincidence. They left there and went to Mount Sinai. When they got to Mount Sinai, God wanted to make a covenant with them. When we read the covenant, it was a voluntary agreement. God invited them to become his people; it wasn't something forced. They agreed that they would become his people and do all the things that he asked them to do and keep all the laws that he had given them. After this, as we know, Moses went up the mountain and fasted for 40 days. What did the people do after 40 days? They made a golden calf. Why did they make that? They didn't believe in Moses. They didn't trust him; they didn't think he'd be coming back. Where do you think they might have thought he had gone? They probably thought he died. He's an old man, 80 years old. He goes up the mountain with his lunchbox, but he certainly doesn't go up there with enough food to sustain him for 40 days. They probably thought, 'Well, he's probably collapsed out of exhaustion or starved to death.' They thought, 'We need to put our faith in something else,' so they built the golden calf and said, 'These are the gods that brought you out of Egypt.' What does it mean to say these are the gods that brought you out of Egypt? I don't think it was everybody; it must have been just a minority. It wasn't everybody. Do you know who? It was the men, you're right. When they said they wanted to build a golden calf, Aaron said, 'Right, I want lots of earrings and rings to build it with.' Who has the earrings and rings? The women did. Did the women want to give up their jewelry to build a golden calf? No. They had to go and try to get it from somewhere else. It wasn't everybody. So who came out of Egypt? There were 12 tribes, but also lots of other people who weren't Hebrews who came along as well. Building a golden calf is like putting your trust in material things instead of recognizing that it's God who works in amazing ways. Sometimes people think, 'Well, it happened because of this and this and this.' After the battle of Dunkirk, what did the British Parliament do? They all went to the church and prayed and thanked God for the amazing miracle that the sea had been exactly like a milk pond, and the cloud cover had been right, allowing the British army to be evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. After the victory at the Falkland Islands, Mr. Thatcher took the whole Parliament into St Margaret's Church, Parliament's church, and they had a worship service there to thank God. This is important. The Hebrews at this time had forgotten; they lost sight of this. Even though God had done these amazing miracles, nothing really had changed within them. If someone does something for you, does it change you? What changes you? When you do something yourself. Even though these amazing things were taking place, nothing really had changed within them. They still conceptualized and saw themselves the way they were living in Egypt. They weren't living there anymore; they were now living where the food was a lot worse, and there were no longer any fast food takeaways, melons, and cucumbers, and all the other nice things they enjoyed in Egypt. The challenge for God and for Moses was how to get all these people, these 12 different tribes who still had this slave mentality and all these other foreigners who came along with them, into a single spiritual community. This is what the whole idea of building the Tabernacle was about. God said to Moses, 'Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering, and you are to receive the offering for me from everyone whose heart prompts them to give.' It wasn't compulsory; it was voluntary. The building of the Tabernacle was something done by volunteers. I was talking to a friend a couple of days ago, and she was telling me that many years ago, when she was asked to do something, she said, 'I'm here; I'm a volunteer.' Today, she said, 'I'm not volunteering.' I thought that's a nice way of looking at things. Sometimes in the past, in our movement, people felt, 'Well, I just have to do this.' But for her, her whole way of thinking was, 'I'm here as a volunteer. I'm here because I want to be here, but sometimes I'm volunteering, and sometimes I'm not.' God said he wants it to be voluntary. The offerings included a whole list of things: gold, silver, bronze, and all this material. You wonder sometimes where they got it all from, but the point again is that everybody was to be involved. Everyone who wanted to be involved in building the Ark was to be involved. People could give of their own gifts and talents. The idea was to build something, a Tabernacle, which required a lot of different kinds of skills in terms of metalwork, carpentry, and different kinds of woods and precious materials. It was something for everybody to be able to contribute if they wanted to. God said, 'Have them make a sanctuary for me.' The idea was that everybody was to be involved in building the Tabernacle, not just the priests or some specialized elite group, but everybody was to be involved in building a sanctuary for God. God didn't say he'd dwell in the Tabernacle; he said, 'I will dwell among them.' In other words, I'll dwell in the people. God is the God of the universe. He didn't say, 'I'll dwell in the Tabernacle,' but 'I'll dwell in them.' Through building the Tabernacle and worshipping God, they were creating the space for God to dwell among the people. God wasn't actually living in the Tabernacle or the temple; he was dwelling in the people because their hearts had contributed towards building the Tabernacle. Through building the Tabernacle, this was the way in which their hearts could be moved. They could open their hearts and give from their hearts. The same way they gave from their hearts, then God would be able to come and dwell in their hearts and live with them. This is how they were able to form together as the people of God, as a worshipping community. They conceptualized and saw themselves as a people of God and as a free people. They no longer had a king; God was their King. God ruled them through his law. What's the great thing about having God as your King? What's the best thing about having God as your ruler? He's invisible. What does that mean? What are the implications of having an invisible King? You have to be responsible for yourself. It means you have to form your own relationship with this invisible God through your original mind and conscience. What's easier: to follow an invisible God or to follow a visible King? To follow a visible King. It's much easier just to do as you're told. But God didn't want people just to do as they were told; he was an invisible King. He wanted to rule them and guide them through their heart, through their original mind and conscience. That, of course, meant you had to make an effort. You had to live a life of prayer and study and develop your original mind and conscience so you could have your own personal relationship with God and be guided by God through your original mind and conscience. That's hard work. It's much easier just to do as you're told, just to have somebody telling you and ordering you around, which is what it was like in Egypt. God was challenging them to put aside this. It's not easy. How easy is it? Sometimes when we look at the story of Moses and the Hebrews, we can be critical. We have to think, where were they coming from? They were coming from living in a slave society, and God wanted them to become a free people. How many people are able to change their way of thinking so radically? Is it easy? No. Sometimes people get liberated from slavery, but for generations, they carry on with the same kind of mentality. Within a very short space of time, God wanted them to move from a slave mentality to the mentality of being a free people responsible for their own lives. That's a huge jump, and they made it. I don't know anybody else who ever made it, but they did. They made a huge transformation. It's not easy.

Conscience and the whole life of the people were orientated around worship, worshipping God around the Tabernacle, which was a sort of portable temple. They went off into Canaan and lived there for 400 years, creating basically a free society. They had no king; God was their King. Every now and then, a judge would arise, a charismatic leader who would lead them to fight against the Philistines or do this or that. Generally, they did not want a king; they preferred to cooperate together as a confederation of tribes who freely supported each other. They sustained this for about 400 years. You might think it is easy to maintain a free society for that long, but has any country in the world done that until now? Iceland is the oldest Parliament, and Britain's modern democracy only came about 150 years ago, while America is about 200 years old. They sustained this kind of free society without a government for about 400 years. Eventually, as you know, with Samuel, they decided they wanted a king. They said to Samuel, 'We want to be like everybody else; we want a king who can tell us what to do and lead us into battle.'

So, they had a king, and of course, Samuel warned them that if they had a king, he would quickly reduce them to a state of servitude. He would start taxing them heavily, employing all their sons as soldiers and their daughters in his kitchens, taking huge taxes from them, and eventually reducing them to slavery. This was how the Tabernacle was built—out of voluntary contributions. This was all part of the process of learning to become a free, responsible people, creating that kind of society. As we know, Solomon built the temple, but it is interesting to see how Solomon went about it. He made agreements with Hiram, the king of Tyre, to get lots of wood and other materials. After making these agreements, King Solomon conscripted labourers from all Israel—30,000 men. This was not voluntary labour; it was forced labour. The translation states that King Solomon raised a levy of forced labour from all Israel, numbering 30,000 men, sending them to Lebanon in relays. They would be in Lebanon for a month and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the levy, and Solomon also had 70,000 burden bearers and 80,000 hewers of stone in the hill country, besides 3,300 chief officers who were over the work.

So, what was going on here? The temple was not built in the same way the Tabernacle was. They were back to slavery. The building of the Tabernacle was supposed to be the culmination of the Exodus, as the date of the temple's construction in the Bible is counted from the date of the Exodus. The temple was meant to be the culmination of everything, but the way Solomon went about it was through forced labour. Solomon had become like another Pharaoh, and the people had been reduced again to slavery. How many wives and concubines did Solomon have? About 300 wives and 700 concubines. Now, think about it. Where do you think these wives and concubines lived? Who do you think paid for their upkeep? The people, through taxation. People often complain about the cost of the royal family, but can you imagine the level of taxation required to maintain a king with hundreds of wives? When I visited Versailles last summer, I thought Buckingham Palace was a little country house compared to it. When Versailles was at full flow, they had 40,000 servants working there. Just think of the level of taxation to support that kind of royal family. The whole of Israel had been turned into slaves to maintain and support Solomon and his family.

When Solomon died, the kingdom was divided. Why was it divided? One general, Jeroboam, was in charge of the forced labour but disagreed with the way things were going. He went into exile and learned about the people's grievances. When Rehoboam, Solomon's son, became king, the elders from the ten tribes of Israel came to him, saying, 'Your father taxed us to death. If you lower the taxes, we will be your loyal subjects.' Rehoboam said he would think about it. He consulted Solomon's old advisers, who advised him to lower the taxes. However, Rehoboam then sought the counsel of his young friends, who told him, 'Your father was weak; you are young and strong. Go back and tell them that my father used whips; I will use scorpions.' This did not go down well, and Jeroboam said, 'We're out of here.' Thus, the kingdom was separated.

The real mistake Solomon made was building the temple using forced labour, taking away the people's freedom and reducing them to a state of slavery. The whole purpose of coming out of slavery in Egypt was to create a free people, a people who could worship God and follow Him through their original mind and conscience, governed by God as their King through the law. However, Solomon quickly reduced this to a state of slavery again, turning back everything that had been accomplished. This is why everything fell apart after that, and it remained in disarray until the time of Jesus. These events from thousands of years ago carry important messages for today. What kind of spiritual community are we creating? We want a community of volunteers, freely engaged and offering our hearts and lives, cooperating and working together to build God's kingdom. God's kingdom is a kingdom where people are free, as it states in the pledge, which talks about freedom several times. That is the kind of community we want—one based on freedom, responsibility, and creativity, where people can give of what they have.

I hope that concludes my sermon for today. I won't take any questions because it's not a Wednesday. Thank you very much for everyone. Great is Your faithfulness, O God. You wrestle with the sinners; You lead us by still waters into mercy, and nothing can keep us from Your heart. Remember Your people, remember Your children, remember Your promise, O God. Your grace is enough for me. Great is Your love and justice, O God. You use the weak to lead the strong; You lead us in the song of Your salvation. Let all Your people remember Your children, remember Your promise, O God. Your grace is enough for me. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we would like to offer our deepest gratitude to You as we gather here as friends and sisters. We come here to worship You, offering ourselves. The more we offer, the more we know You want to give. I pray for Your guidance for all brothers and sisters here so that everyone can experience Your love. We have discussed many things today—freedom, responsibility, identity, and so on. We want to think about not just listening but deeply reflecting on what kind of community we want to build. It has to be very clear; we want to create a beautiful, wonderful community where everyone can feel joy and happiness, where everyone has freedom and responsibility.

Please be with us in whatever we do this week. I pray with gratitude in my name, as the centre of this family. Please take a seat, brothers and sisters. Once again, thank you all so much for coming here this morning. I hope you can take away a very special message from Heavenly Father. Thank you very much, William, for sharing such a wonderful and engaging message with us this morning. Of course, a big thank you to the music ministry band for always helping us to open our hearts and make us a little more spiritual to receive God's special message. We now have a special ceremony, and I would like to invite Simon to introduce that. It's great to see you all. Thank you for coming. What we are going to do is something we haven't done before in this community that we've been building over the last couple of years, which is to welcome people into our community. Today, we are going to welcome four people into our community. I know there are others we should hopefully introduce over the next few weeks and months, but these four have been coming here, particularly over the last six months, getting involved and helping out. Many of you may not even know their names yet.

For us to be a community, it is important that we know each other's names and something about each other's lives. In that way, we can support each other and really create and build the Kingdom that we talk about and want to help God create. I called some of these individuals; I couldn't reach everyone I wanted to introduce this morning, but for the four I was able to contact, I asked them how they felt about being part of a ceremony to be introduced into this community. We made a little commitment card that reads: 'I have been moved to join this community of people that honours God and True Parents. I want to help develop and sustain it, sharing my gifts and talents with others. I promise to share the beauty of this community with others and to support it financially and with my attendance. I want to be a part of building Heaven brick by brick.' They signed one for themselves and a larger one for me to keep. Now, I will invite them up one by one to share a few words, and we will present them with a Divine Principle book from all of us. We will also say a prayer for them. This is for them, but it is also for the whole community because as they make this commitment, we are also making a commitment to them as our brothers and sisters.

Let's invite up Hen, Faton, Christine, and Roger. There is a little card in here from all of us today. When I told Hen, who came early this morning to go over this, he said he had just bought one of these books. Now he has one to lend to a friend, which is great. I want to let each of them share a few words. We won't take a long time, but it is nice to hear from them. Maybe they can take turns. Thank you very much, everyone. As Simon said, my name is Faton, and my surname is Bary. I come from Albania and met the Unification Church in 2002. I want to say a big thank you to someone here, Mr T Rashim, who introduced me to the movement. A big thank you to Simon and all of you for welcoming us here. Thank you, everybody.

I met the Unification movement last year, a short time ago, but I feel I have found myself and joy in your community. Now I can say it is our community. The commitment that Simon mentioned is what I want to contribute—my effort and my love—to build our community into a better world for everyone. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Roger, and my surname is Wolf. I met the movement in 1979. I feel like I have climbed a mountain and reached the top. This is a personal victory for me and a heartfelt moment.

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the brothers and sisters who have welcomed me into this community. Since I arrived here last year in the UK, I have been discovering new aspects of Heavenly Father and the wonderful love of True Parents. I am particularly thankful to Simon and Cho for introducing me to this opportunity for growth and for allowing me to share my experiences. I hope to become less shy in exchanging my thoughts and feelings with all of you.

Let us take a moment to pray together. Heavenly Father, we want to pray for Christine, Ftin Hen, and Roger as we offer this ceremony as a community. We pray that your hopes for their lives can truly be realised. You know every single hair on their heads and every aspect of their hearts, and we ask that you guide them along their path of faith. May their roles in this community be a blessing for them and for all of us, enabling us to help them use their talents constructively for building your kingdom.

As we reflect on our commitment to one another as members of this community, let us remember to support each other in both joyful and difficult moments. We are reminded of our precious brother, Mr Kobayashi, who is currently in intensive care. We pray for him and recognise the importance of spiritually and socially supporting families during such times. Together with these brothers and sisters standing before us, we aspire to fulfil the vision and mission we have for our community, creating a tipping point of people in this nation who worship you daily and express their love for you and their families.

I would like to thank everyone for your generous contributions through donations and tithing. Your support is deeply appreciated by the community and by Heavenly Father. The finance committee has prepared a report to explain how the funds are being used for the development and growth of our community. I invite An Hughes to come forward and share the details of this report.

In the report for the last quarterly period, we discuss the income and expenses from April to June. We have recovered the costs associated with the autobiography sales, and from now on, any purchases will go to the National Headquarters. The expenses for our pastors and their activities are also detailed in the report. It is important to note that the tithing figures reflect a month behind, as checks are processed in the following month. Additionally, we have incurred costs related to education and international travel, which are outlined in the report.

I want to highlight Tashimoto, who has accepted the responsibility of managing our finances. I have been training him over the past three months, and I will continue to support him as he takes on this role. I encourage everyone to assist him in this transition, as it can be challenging to manage donations and receipts while also socialising after services. Please ensure that any donations are clearly marked and securely placed in envelopes to avoid any confusion.

Lastly, I would like to mention that Mary Franklin will be celebrating her 60th birthday this coming Friday. For those who have received help from her over the years, please take a moment to acknowledge her contributions. We also have an outreach programme this afternoon at 2 p.m., where we will introduce our community and the Divine Principle. There will be music and testimonies from young members, and I encourage everyone to participate and engage with the community.

As we conclude, please remember to keep Mr Kobayashi in your prayers as he undergoes a brain biopsy. He has been moved to Charing Cross Hospital, and we ask for your support during this time. We have refreshments prepared downstairs, including a lovely curry rice lunch, so please stay and enjoy each other's company. Let us continue to take care of one another and pray for each other, as this is vital for our community.