When Moses ascended Mount Sinai for forty days to receive additional teaching from God (Ex 24:18), one of the things he received was a set of instructions for the tabernacle, a portable worship structure that the Israelites would build. God states the purpose of this structure in Exodus 25:8: "And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst."
In a sermon at Church of the Messiah on April 5, 2025, Kyle Kettering reflected on God's desire to be with his people. It is an awesome thing, he pointed out, that the Creator of the Universe would be present with the Israelites in this way. God has no need of a house, as he declares in Isaiah 66:1:
"Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?" But God goes on to say that he likes to spend time with the person "who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word."
In coming to Israel's tabernacle, Kyle said, God both lowered himself and raised the Israelites. Kyle related a midrash on Exodus 25:8 from Midrash Tanchuma saying that Moses "backed away" when he heard the instruction to build a tabernacle because he was so surprised and amazed.
Even more surprising is the fact that God came to earth as a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, as John 1:1-18 relates. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," this famous prologue to John's Gospel begins. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," verse 14 adds.
Kyle described some of the background of John's prologue that appeared in Second Temple Jewish literature.
- Wisdom 9:1 pictures Solomon praying, "O God of my ancestors and Lord of mercy, who have made all things by your word..."
- In the works of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, the word (Greek logos, as in John 1) is an intermediate supernatural reality between God and the universe.
- In the Aramaic Targums, the Memra (the "word" in Aramaic) plays a similar role. In Genesis 1 in Targum Neophyti, it is the Memra who says, "Let there be light."
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