When you plow through the tabernacle details and are getting a bit bored, or tempted to skip past them, just remember that they are reminding you of a God who cares about your worship because through your worship he wants you to be close to him and him close to you. And furthermore, those details are a promissory note to you that one day in the eternal future, there will no need of a tabernacle because “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb will be our tabernacle.”
The Journey// Focus: Exodus 37:1-9
Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood—two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. He overlaid it with pure gold, both inside and out, and made a gold molding around it. He cast four gold rings for it and fastened them to its four feet, with two rings on one side and two rings on the other. Then he made poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with gold. And he inserted the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry it. He made the atonement cover of pure gold—two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. Then he made two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. He made one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; at the two ends he made them of one piece with the cover. The cherubim had their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim faced each other, looking toward the cover.
In chapter after chapter over the last sixteen chapters in Exodus we are provided exacting details of the tabernacle, its furnishing and the supplies that will be used for worship. How exciting this must have been for the children of Israel, who up to this point, worshipped a God who took no form and had no sacred temple where the worshipper could meet with him. Unlike the surrounding nations, their God was invisible. Now he would have a home, and they would have a place worthy of a deity.
From our point of view, it is very likely that as we read this tabernacle minutiae between Exodus 25-40 we may be bored and tempted to “speed read” if not skip over it entirely. Yet since we hold a high view of Scripture, namely, that all sixty-six books of the Bible are inspired by God, and are therefore “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), we must conclude that God included these chapters as a blue print for worship that still has some application for both our corporate and private worship today. And it does.
Many have undertaken the task of explaining the significance of the tabernacle, but that is neither my expertise nor my purpose here. But I would point out three general “take-aways” from this chapter, and its companion chapters, that should remind us of the grace and mercy of the up-close and personal God to whom we belong.
Firstly, it reminds us that Almighty God, the Creator and Sovereign of the Universe, is worthy of our highest praise and continual adoration. In the artistry and richness of the tabernacle—made according to his design—he tells us that our most careful and costly worship is due him.
Secondly, in calling his people to construct a tabernacle that he, himself, has designed, he is showing us that he has come “to dwell,” literally, to tabernacle, in the midst of his people. That is why his people must be holy, worship him in his holiness, and themselves be holy. But more than that, think of how amazing it was for a God to dwell in his awesome but loving presence among his people! And he does. What other god is like Israel’s God. There is no other. How merciful and lovingly kind Yaweh is!
But thirdly, as significant as this house of worship was for the people of Israel as they journeyed through the desert and later on possessed the Promised Land, the tabernacle was also a picture of what was to come—a prophetic foreshadow of a time when God would come to permanently and personally dwell among his people. He would come one day in the glorious incarnation of his Son (John 1:14), and would again one day return in the Second Coming to usher in his permanent and personal dwelling among his people in the eternal kingdom.
When you plow through the tabernacle details and are getting a bit bored, just remember, those details are reminding you of a God who cares about your worship because through your worship he wants you to be close to him and him close to you. So much so does the Creator desire intimacy with you, his creation, that he sent his Son to physically, literally, bring the tabernacle to you and through his death, make a way—a new and living way—into the place of the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy of Holies. And the full and final fulfillment of that Divine desire to have intimate closeness with you and all his people will be consummated at the Second Coming when there will be no “temple in the eternal city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” (Revelation 21:22)
Learn to read between the details of the tabernacle the promissory note of love that God has left for you.
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