Then wrought Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted man, in whom the LORD put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary, according to all that the LORD had commanded, Exodus 36:1.
A young man somewhat renowned as a carpenter pointed out this verse to me and asked if that meant that the Tabernacle was built perfectly. We can go a step further than just this verse and we can throw in Exodus 31:2-5; See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.
What we are seeing is inspiration as Elihu described it to Job, But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding, Job 32:8. We can be sure that in every task that Bezaleel and Aholiab was given was performed exactly as the scripture dictated. A cubit was a cubit. I have no doubt that when the Tabernacle was completed, the most persnickety of quality control person imaginable could not have found a single deviation from any measurement or material given by God.
What about things wherein no measurement was given? How big is a horn? What should a crown look like? If you think about it, there was much discretion given to Bezaleel in fashioning many things in the Tabernacle. For example, how big were the cherubim on the ark? Even Paul admitted, And over it the cherubims of glory shadowing the mercyseat; of which we cannot now speak particularly, Hebrews 9:5. We cannot speak particularly about them because no particulars were given.
I suspect that if God had given 1000 men the same commission as Bezaleel, each Tabernacle would have looked different and yet each tabernacle would be exactly the same in size, position and material. If we could have seen the original Tabernacle, we would have seen the personality of the creator of the universe and we would have seen Bezaleel's personality. All throughout creation it has pleased God to express himself through the personalities of his people.
God hates the nature of man. He can be grieved with the character of man, but he loves the personality of the worst of men. There is no such thing as a bad personality. There is only bad character which obscures the personality. It is to God's glory when he replaces the nature of fallen man with the new man through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It is to the Glory of God when he slowly reforms the character of fallen men who are now regenerated in Christ.
When he has given a new nature to a chosen vessel, and when he has taught that vessel to be clean, it is his honor to allow that redeemed personality to manifest the things of God. If we had seen the Tabernacle we would have seen the personality of Bezaleel and yet there would have been no violation of scripture. How a horn was to be fashioned, what a crown should look like and other particulars were Bezaleel's to give.
Local churches are like that. There are certain things in which we have no choice. They are dictated by God. We have ordinances and offices specified in scripture. We have certain behaviors that we are expected to keep. Nevertheless, churches vary from place to place and that variance reflects the personalities involved. One of the grievous aspects to some Fundamentalism is the smothering of personality that is taught in Bible colleges and so evident in the preaching. Preachers who are on record as being against human cloning nevertheless often seem to be human clones.
Personality is evident in scripture. I am not a person who believes in direct teletype transmission in all scripture. Some scripture was evidently given just that way when a man was told to write a specific thing. Other scripture shows a personality other than one on the three personalities of the Godhead. Any God who could not allow a man to shape his own horn, or design his own crown molding and still have a perfect product isn't really much of a God. The miracle of scripture is that the inspiration of God (not inspired men) gave the spirits of men understanding to write.
God never promised to preserve the Tabernacle. He did promise to preserve his word. In that preservation we can see the personalities of men and women with whom we will spend eternity.