Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why The Tabernacle Matters | Torah | Exodus 25:10-30:38

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

So what's the point of the tabernacle? Do we still need a tabernacle? Why did they need a tabernacle in the Old Testament? In today's episode, Jensen uses Exodus 25:10-30:38 to explain the purpose of the tabernacle and what it means to Christians today. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 25:10-30:38

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair, and right now we're going through Exodus. Every year my church back home would put on a VBS, and every year the sixth graders about to graduate out of the children's ministry got to build the tabernacle. Yes, it was very VBS of us. I remember being so excited when it was my year to build it. We read passages about what was supposed to be in it, and then we gave different people different jobs on what they got to assemble. I was on the team that made the concrete tablets of the Ten commandments. Amazing. And on the last day of VBS, all the younger kids got to come and take a

tour of our tabernacle. Now, of course, our tabernacle fit inside of one of the classrooms in my church, and our tabernacle was made out of what I assume was previous bedsheets and PVC piping that had been used for years, all completed with the plywood arc of the covenant. It would not stand up next to the real thing, but it was really, really cool to a bunch of VBS kids back in the day. The thing is, I am assuming that most of you are not planning on building a replica of the tabernacle anytime soon, which makes chapters 25 through 30 in Exodus seem a little irrelevant to a modern audience. It's almost six chapters of specific details on what materials to use,

how big to make the tabernacle, what thread you should use for the priest's garments, and more. Which means sitting down to read these chapters can be tedious, and at times a bit dull. And yet, despite its tedious detail, there's so much that we can take from these chapters. In the 10 minutes that we have today, we have to choose to take an overview of this passage. And yet in doing so, I hope that you'll want to go back and read these chapters to study exactly what

God calls the Israelites to do, because these sometimes tedious chapters actually point to some really incredible truths about who God is and what his ultimate plan for redemption is. Now, while the plagues and the Red Sea splitting and the rescue of God's people is, often the highlight of Exodus for most people. These chapters that we're looking at today, they should be just as much at the forefront of our mind when we think about Exodus. Because when God rescued his people, when he brought them out of Egypt, he didn't just do it to show he was more powerful than Pharaoh. He did it because he wanted to be in relationship with his people. And the building of the tabernacle is for exactly that purpose. See, it was the

tabernacle that was going to be God's dwelling place among his people. This was where God was going to meet with his people, where his people would make sacrifices for their sins so that they could be in right relationship with him. This was to be a signpost that God was present among his people. Chapter 29 says, I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God. The Exodus, the rescue of God's people, is all done so that God might dwell among his people. And here in these sometimes tedious chapters, we find God providing a place for him to do just that.

And while we cannot go into all the specifics that are full of imagery and meaning, I want to highlight two overarching themes that we see coming out of the specific details of these chapters. So if you read through these chapters, you'll notice that within the tabernacle, there's a lot of gold. God's tabernacle is to be adorned with precious metals. There are purple curtains all around the walls of the tabernacle. And culturally, purple was known as the color of royalty. He has his people make an ark of the covenant where he will sit enthroned. See, this tabernacle is to be seen by God's people, not just as where their God will dwell, but they're divine king. And second, this tabernacle was supposed to make its original audience think back to the

Garden of Eden. There are special specifications for the tabernacle's entrance to face east and to be guarded by cherubim. The lampstand and the law inside of the tabernacle symbolically point back to the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. See, throughout scripture, the Garden of Eden is seen as the place where God dwells with his people, a paradise. And although sin cast out God's people from Eden, God is merciful. The Ark of Scripture shows a God who is restoring creation to build a new and better Eden where God will dwell with his people forever. And so in this creation of a tabernacle amidst his people, God begins the work of restoring his post-fall relationship with his people. and he does so by dwelling and living among them once more.

And so, as a modern audience not tasked with the completion of building a tabernacle, appointing priests, or making sacrifices, we may want to skim over these verses and believe they are merely there for historical accuracy. But we would be missing out on an incredible window into God's redemptive plan for all of creation. See, we may not still have a tabernacle or priests or sacrifices, but that is. isn't because God's plan for restoration failed, and he no longer dwells among his people. No, we don't have those things because God's plan succeeded. It succeeded through Jesus Christ. See, in John chapter 1, verse 14, Jesus is said to be the word who became flesh and dwelt among us.

Jesus is God. He is Yahweh, the Lord who became human, so that he could dwell among them. And in John chapter 2, verse 21, when talking about the destruction of the temple, which was a permanent replacement for the tabernacle, Jesus says that upon his death and resurrection, three days later, he would rise and his body would be a temple. See, Jesus is the divine king who is returned, and instead of living in a palace far away from his people, he dwells among them, and he himself is a temple for his people to meet face to face with their God. And while the tabernacle was to be a place of sacrifice and atoning for sin,

Jesus's death and resurrection became the final sacrifice needed for atonement. His death has sanctified his people. He is wiped us clean. He laid down his own life so that God's plan to dwell among and within his people could be fully realized. The barrier of sin was broken and upon Jesus' death, the curtain separating the holiest place in the temple, the place where God dwelt was ripped in half. God would now dwell even more intimately with his people.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 616 that God's people are to be a temple of the living God. When Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to his people, Yahweh the Lord now dwells among and within his people. So just as Jesus becomes the embodiment of the tabernacle and the temple by dwelling among his people, we too are able to become temples, signposts that God is here. He is present. He is among us through the Holy Spirit living within his people. We as God's people are many Edens like the Tabernacle, living in this world with the mission to spread the boundaries of Eden little by little as more and more people come to know the love of Christ.

The tabernacle was always supposed to point us forward, to make us long for a full restoration, for a day when we could dwell perfectly with our God. Just as the Israelites would have rejoiced to have their God near, to have their God providing a way to atone for their sin, we too should rejoice. We look to Jesus, to the gift of the Holy Spirit, and rejoice that our divine king is making a way, in the darkness to dwell among his people again. And just like the Israelites, we still look forward. We look forward to a day when God will finally restore all of creation and expand Eden to the

ends of the universe. He will establish his new kingdom, a garden city where man and God dwell perfectly with one another. Until then, we rejoice knowing that we have a God whose greatest delight and desire is to dwell intimately among his people. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help encourage you in the middle of the work week and bring you deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.