The Tabernacle

Story:  The Tabernacle

Passage: Exodus 26

Characters:  God, Moses

Summary:    God gives Moses instructions for the Tabernacle. 

  

Notes:  I have been putting this post off because it is long and confusing and full of details which I was tempted to say are meaningless.  However, these details come straight from God so I am going to dive in and look at them.  God wanted Israel to build a tabernacle.  The previous three items were to be placed in the tabernacle.  I am going to list the things God specifically asked for and then if I have an idea of what they represent, I will try to communicate that.  Most of this is speculation unfortunately.  Here goes, the details of the tabernacle:

Dimensions -  God supplied specific dimensions for the cover, the curtains, and the frame of the tabernacle.  He even had enough detail to instruct what to do with overlap.  I believe He gave them the dimensions so they would know how much material they would need.  His structure is both solid, and portable.  It comes apart fairly easily for when they had to move around.  The basic design was that there was a room made of an elaborate colorful curtain covering a frame.  This was covered by a plain piece of material.  This was then covered by two more coverings made of watertight animal skin. 

Colors – God specified the colors to be used for the curtains.  They were to be blue, purple, and scarlet with images of Cherubim worked into them.  These same colors were used for the veil.  I did some research on the use of colors in the Bible and I may post that sometime.  Basically what I found was that blue represents the law, purple represents royalty, and scarlet represents both sin and cleansing.  I find it fascinating that if you were to be in the Holy of Holies with the Ark, you would be surrounded with gold, blue, purple, and scarlet.  You would be in a place where holiness, royalty, the law, and cleansing are all combined together.  This is a beautiful picture of the plan God had for humanity and it is communicated purely through the colors He specified for His Tabernacle. 

Clasp material – God specified the material of the clasps used to hold the curtains together.  The innermost curtain would have gold clasps and the next curtain would have bronze.  Obviously we see the continuation of gold being the only metal visible in the Holy of Holies.  This purity and holiness is really powerful if you think about it. 

Material of the curtains – The materials used from the inside out are, fine linen, goat hair, rams’ skins, and goatskins. 

Material of frames – The frames of the Tabernacle would also be visible from the inside and thus they were also acacia wood overlaid with gold. 

The veil material – The veil would be the same material as the curtains, but it would serve a different function.  The inside of the Tabernacle would be holy ground, but the Ark would be even holier.  The phrase “even holier” seems redundant.  How can something be more holy?  The point of this distinction is that God is infinitely more holy than we can comprehend!  God has us picture holiness, and then tells us He is even more holy than that.  The Ark which represents the presence and holiness of God is in the Most Holy Place.  This was the least accessible part of the Tabernacle.  A common person could only access God through the High Priest, and even he could only enter the Most Holy place once a year I believe. (We will read more about this later and I will edit this if I am wrong)  The holiness of God keeps us from Him.  We cannot survive being exposed to this Holiness without His mercy!  Because of this, I am fascinated by the positioning of the other pieces of furniture we have read about.

Position of the table and lampstand – If you remember, the lampstand seems to represent the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the table for the Bread of the Presence seems to represent the physical presence of God manifest in Christ.  We now know that the Spirit lives in us as Christians and guides us closer to God.  We also know now that Christ came to Earth and acted as our High priest.  He was the go between us and a Holy God.  As such, the Spirit and the Son are like the intermediaries through whom we can access the Spirit.  Thus the son and the Spirit are uniquely accessible to us in a way the holiness represented by the Father is not.  This is not to say that the Son and the Spirit are not holy, but rather that by God’s perfect design, this is the way He extends His mercy to us and allows us access to a Holy God.  Although these things were not fully understood in Moses’ time, we see that both the Table and the Lampstand are positioned outside of the Most Holy Place and are rather in the Holy Place.  As you can see, this communicates that these two are Holy, but accessible.  The Table is located just outside the veil, and when Christ was crucified, we read in the gospels that the veil was torn in two symbolizing that we now have access to the Father in ways that we never had before.  If you were to enter the temple after the veil was torn, you would see the Ark of the Covenant with the Table of the Bread of the Presence between you and the Ark.  I think this is a powerful picture of God’s plan for restoration of us to Him and it was all symbolized in the tabernacle in Moses’ day.

Questions:  Is this interpretation of the Tabernacle correct? Does it make sense?  What else is symbolized in the design of the tabernacle?

Lessons:  The Tabernacle shows us that from the beginning, God had a plan to restore us to Himself.  Take a moment and just worship the Holy God who loved us enough to restore us to Him even in the middle of our rebellion against Him!  Worship Him for His unchanging mercy and grace!