Virtually no one has died on a commercial US flight since 2014. Flying is just about the safest thing you can do these days. Why is that? My friends, if there is a single word that explains this near-miracle, it is the word "checklist." Before any plane is allowed to get off the ground, every last system and feature on that plane is meticulously gone over and checked off. Nothing is left to chance in the maintenance, repairs, fueling, piloting, routing, loading, or anything else. It's all written down on a lot of clipboards and checked off piece by piece by the ground crew and pilots.
Why do I bring this up? Because we have looked verse-by-verse at the instructions for building the tabernacle. Now, we have this huge section, three chapters long, that describes in numbing detail how every last instruction was carried out. You may find this strange, uncouth, hard to follow — maybe you even skipped to Leviticus, and then on to Numbers, last time you got to this place in reading through the Bible. But here's the thing: worshiping God is important. It's incredibly important. It's so important that it's worth checking to be sure that every element of it is in place. In short, this section of Exodus is the checked-off preflight checklist. Before the tabernacle can be put into service, before God can move into it, the checklist has to be completed. That's what this passage is about. What we'll see in it is that Israel carried out to the letter God's instructions for His dwelling place; how much more will Christ carry out God's will for His dwelling place!
