Like the ancient Hebrews, we seek a permanent home. Yet God brings His home to us …..
GOD AMONG MEN
God is pursuing an intimate love relationship with you. He will not end that pursuit until He has accomplished His eternal purpose in your life. From Genesis to Revelation, we can see God progressively moving closer and closer to the heart of man.
It is fascinating that more space is devoted to the account of the Tabernacle in the Scriptures than to any other single object. Exodus chapters 25-40 give details of the plans and construction of the Tabernacle or ‘Tent of Meeting’. Moreover, the New Testament makes figurative reference to the Tabernacle and its furnishings, and the Epistle to the Hebrews simply cannot be understood without a knowledge of the books of Exodus and Leviticus. Hebrews is a wonderful commentary on Leviticus.
In the Tabernacle, we find God dwelling among His chosen people. “Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them. According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it” (Exodus 25:8-9). The Tabernacle symbolized the dwelling place of God in the midst of His people. “There I will meet with you; and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak to you about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel” (v. 25).
TEMPORARY PLACE OF CONVENIENCE
The Tabernacle was a temporary place of convenience where God met with His chosen people. It was simply a tent of meeting. It was for use in the wilderness wandering of His people. The thing of importance is that it was God’s dwelling place. It was there in the midst of His people that He took up abode and met with them between the Cherubim, on the mercy-seat. In the holy of holies God manifested His presence by means of the Shekinah glory, and His grace on the mercy seat or place of propitiation.
The holy of holies found its fulfilment in the person of the Holy One of God, His Son, Jesus Christ. The glory of God was seen on the Mount of Transfiguration. The apostles said, “We beheld His glory.” Christ is the meeting place between a holy God and sinful man. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me” (John 14:6).
The apostle Peter concluded a message saying, “there is salvation is no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). There is but one Mediator between God and men – the God-Man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). He spanned the gulf between the holy Deity and sinful humanity because He was both God and Man. “God was in Christ reconciling a world unto Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9).
The Tabernacle was the way in which a sinner might approach a holy God. It reminded men and women that sin separated them from God. The Tabernacle was God’s dwelling place among men. It was a place of grace for the sinner. The sinner in his sins could not be in the presence of God eternally, so God – in the person of His Son – came from heaven to earth, and died the Just for the unjust “that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). The Tabernacle was the evidence that God had graciously brought the redeemed people into a place of nearness to Himself. We who were a far off from Him because of our sin have been made night by the precious blood of Christ (Eph. 2:13).
MOVING WITH HIS PEOPLE
The Tabernacle moved about the wilderness with the people. Yahweh became a pilgrim with His pilgrim people. He occupied a tent with tent dwellers. The tent of meeting symbolized God in the midst of His people dwelling among them leading, guiding, providing and protecting. Moses tells us “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34-35).
This Tabernacle in the wilderness was a copy of the real one in heaven. Seven times we are told that Moses was commanded to make the Sanctuary after the pattern of it which was shown him in the Mountain (Ex. 25:9, 40; 26:30; 27:8; Num. 8:4; Acts 7:44; Heb. 8:5). Nothing was left to chance or human ingenuity. The construction was according to the Divine model God gave to Moses.
“Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own” (Hebrews 9:23-25).
In Solomon’s Temple God came and dwelt in a permanent dwelling place with His people in the Promised Land. “It happened that when the priests came from the holy place, the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord” (1 Kings 8:11-12).
However, when the people of Israel turned to idols, the LORD destroyed Solomon’s Temple and gave His people over to Babylonian captivity for seventy years. King Nebuchadnezzar was only an instrument in the hands of Yahweh.
The Temple was rebuilt under Zerubbabel (Ezra 3:12; 6:15, 16). It seems that God did not dwell in Herod’s Temple that replaced Zerubbabel’s. There was no Ark of the Covenant and Shekinah glory in it. By Jesus’ day, the Temple had become a den of thieves. The Roman General Titus in A. D. 70 destroyed Herod’s Temple.
THE KEY TO THE TABERNACLE IS MESSIAH JESUS.
The key to our understanding of the Tabernacle is Messiah (or “Christ”). It was a symbol, or picture and prophecy of the man in whom God would become incarnate and dwell with His people. He will be the final and eternal dwelling place (Hebrews 2:14-18). Hebrews contrast the pattern in heaven and the copy in Jerusalem. In summary the author of Hebrews said, “the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man” (Hebrews 8:1-2).
Moreover, God came even nearer to man in the person of His Son Jesus the Messiah. He is God with us. The apostle John describes God coming near to His people in these words. “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:14, 18). Paul wrote, “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9).
Jesus began His ministry by cleansing Herod’s Temple. The religious leaders demanded an explanation. Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body” (John 2:19-21). The LORD God tabernacled Himself in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. The purpose of the incarnation is stated by the apostle Paul, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). The Tabernacle was the manifestation of God in order to bring Israel into communion with Himself.
The Tabernacle was the place where sacrifice was made. Outside the court stood the brazen altar where the animals were brought, and on which they were slain. There the blood was shed and atonement was made for sin. Moreover, Jesus Christ fulfilled in His very own person the typical significance of this brazen altar. The body in which He tabernacled on earth was nailed to the Cross outside the city walls. The Cross was the altar upon which God’s Lamb was slain, where His precious blood was shed, and where complete atonement was made for our sin.
Furthermore, Jesus Christ rose from the dead to live within you. Probably the greatest and most thrilling mystery revealed to Paul was this marvelous truth. It is “the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26-27). Imagine that. A Jewish God taking up residence in a bunch of Gentiles! (Cf. Eph. 2:21-22; 1 John 4:4).
Praise God indeed this Christmas time – or should that really be, this Tabenacling time?
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