The Bread of His Presence

I love finding something beautiful in God's Word. Easy to do, I know, because it is all beautiful. But you know those times when something particularly 'stands out'?

I was reading about being consecrated. I looked up the scriptures containing that word and began to read about these things being consecrated (set apart as holy for the Lord's use):

1 Kings 9:3

The Lord said to him: “I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me; I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there."

The new testament says our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Don't love you love that He says "My eyes and My heart will always be there" ??

                And His Name. 

OH. And then I read about the Bread of His Presence.

1 Samuel 21:6

So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the Lord and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away.

That led me to a little research.

The Table (carrier of the Bread of Presence)

The Mishnah (writing of Jewish traditions) also suggests that the Table could be dismantled into small portions, so that if any part of it ever became ritually impure, it could be regain its ritual purity by washing the parts in a Mikvah.(1)

^{I LOVE THIS!! Remember when Jesus was washing the disciples' feet and Peter told the Lord that he could not let him wash his feet?}

^{John 13: 6} He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
⁷ Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
⁸ “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
⁹ “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”
¹⁰ Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean."

Sometimes I can feel like I have completely disappointed God. When I come to Him, He washes me. He doesn't require that I be completely 'saved' again.
 

I've had the 'bath'. He only washes the part that needs to be clean.

We, like the table, carry the Bread of His Presence. We can go to him to be restored in whatever part of our lives that has been defiled. Then, we are bearers once again of the sweetness of His Presence.

Another thing about this table...

The Mishnah states that there were 28 ventilation tubes, 14 for each pile, each of which was open at one end only. The view exists that the supports and tubes formed a complex receptacle for the loaves, similar to a grate, with the lowest loaf in each pile resting directly on the table, but the with the next loaf resting on the two lowest of the tubes, and so forth up the pile. There were 12 loaves.

^{The bread was set within a support of ventilation tubes and topped with golden bowls filled with incense mixed with salt.}

^Wow.

^{There was AIR moving around the bread. I love the way the Holy Spirit breathes on His Word and makes His Presence known.}

 

^{The smell of the bread was prominent in this Holy Place. The bread was kneaded outside the temple, but baked INside so the aroma would fill the place. The bread was replaced with fresh bread every 7 days. The priests were allowed to eat the bread--so it was consumed.}

^{The word for this bread is literally 'love feast'. It is a picture of the bread of our communion with The Lord.} 

^{Thousands of years ago, this was done as a picture of what was to come through Jesus.}

 

^{I have a lot to meditate on here. Carrying His Presence, His fragrance, being consecrated.}

 

^{I've only begun to learn.} 

 

^{Footnote 1: (Mikvah is a place of immersion for purity. Worshippers would be totally immersed in a Mikvah to be purified. Some purifications required being immersed in 'living water' found in a natural spring or a stream.)}

^{(This photo shows a less elaborate system of tubes between the loaves:)}