So, we're going to go to Exodus right now. We're going to go to Exodus chapter 26. So if you have your Bible, then please turn there, Exodus 26. We're going to look at the whole chapter. I'll read it one portion at a time today. We've come to the part of Exodus that is describing the tabernacle and not just the pieces that will go in the tabernacle, but now the tabernacle itself, this actual tent of meeting that God would establish in the camp of Israel as his dwelling place among them. God has told us, and we saw this in what we prayed from in Revelation just a minute ago, that God is the one who was, and who is, and who is to come. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought through those words before. Maybe you've never heard those words before. If you've been around church a while, you've probably heard them. But this is what God calls Himself. That He was. He was God before we were around. And He is. He's God right now. And then he says that he is to come. Part of that means that he will keep being God in the future, but the way he actually says it is not the one who will be, as in just a state of future being. He says he is the one who is to come, as in a state of future being with us. that He is coming back. Jesus is coming again. That's the way that God describes Himself, and that's the way that God is picturing Himself in the tabernacle. That this God who has always been God and who continues to be God is coming personally to His people. He was, He is, and He's coming, people. He's coming. God is coming. I want you to know that you will meet God one day. Now, you may have already met God in the sense that God may have already come to you and regenerated your soul so that you have been brought to tearful, genuine repentance of your sin as you've come to faith in Jesus as the Savior. In that sense, if you're a believer, you have met God, but you're going to meet Him face to face one day. Believers, as I say that, that's an extreme joy to us. that we consider that the One who has loved us and freed us from our sins by His blood, that He will be the One who is with us forever and ever, and we get to enjoy Him forever. We get to do what we were made to do. to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I also want you to know, if you're not a believer, by the way, if you're not a believer, thank you for watching this live stream. Thank you for doing that. Maybe that's an evidence right there that God is doing something in your heart, or in your life, or even just in your circumstances because your family member talked you into watching it. I don't know, but I want you to know this, that because God is God, And because you were created by Him for the purpose of glorifying Him, you will meet Him one day. You will meet Him one day. And if your faith is not in Jesus, that is a terrifying thing. Those in the Bible who presumed upon God, who just thought, well, I can just go up to God, you know what happened to them is that they died. This happened when Uzzah, who was probably one of the Levites, he was walking along a road beside this cart that was carrying the Ark of the Covenant, and he saw the cart stumbling, and he thought that it would be better for his hand to touch that Ark of the Covenant than to let it fall down into the mud. But that Ark of the Covenant represented the very presence of God, and God said not to touch it. And God struck him dead. He thought, well, I can just come before God and it won't matter. I'll do God a favor by coming to Him. I'll prop up the Ark of the Covenant. God struck him dead. King Uzziah, similar name to Uzzah, but a different person and a different era of history. King Uzziah of Israel. He's spoken of in the Bible as a good king, a king who loved God, a king who righted many of the things that were wrong in Israel. And yet, what did he do? He presumed that he could go straight into the Holy of Holies and offer the priest sacrifices. And do you know what God did? God struck him with leprosy and he died from it. Even as somebody who thought, well, I'm doing the right things, and had some sort of sincerity even, probably, in his desire to do that. You can't just presume to come to God. Do you know what will happen to you if you come into the presence of God without being covered by the blood of Jesus, by faith? You will die. You will suffer eternal conscious torment in a place called hell, and rightly so, because God is holy. God is holy. And you can't come to a holy God and say, I'm pretty good. I guess I'll be alright. That's not how it works. That's just not how it works. But here is what the tabernacle shows us, guys. The tabernacle shows us that God would make a way for the holy God to come and to be with and to purify sinful people. so that God Himself could come and be their God, and they could be His people. And what it points us to, believer, what it points us to, unbeliever. It points us to Jesus. It points us to Jesus, who is the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him. that He's the one who's come and dwelt and tabernacled among us, and who has made open access for us who believe in Jesus Christ. The tabernacle was a visual aid that God gave in the wilderness to show His people something about the way that God will come, and for us who He comes to not to be consumed by His righteous wrath, but to be at peace with him by his gracious love. So let's look first of all at the very first verse of Exodus chapter 26, where we see God tabernacling, camping, dwelling with man. It says, verse one of Exodus 26, moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with 10 curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns, you shall make them with cherubim skillfully worked into them. All right. I want to pause right there, even before we come to the part where it talks about the 10 curtains. We'll come to that in the next section. If you're following along on that sermon outline that I told you to download, that'll be number two. But first of all, let's just think about what it means when it says, you shall make the tabernacle. Now, he's already been describing things about it. He's been describing things that are going to go inside it. He's been describing aspects of it. But now he says, you're going to make the actual tabernacle itself. You're going to make the tent. That's what it was. The tabernacle was a tent. Later on, during the days of Solomon, it would get replaced by a stone building. And that stone building was called the Temple, and it represented all the same things that the Tabernacle did, just in a more permanent form. Not ultimately permanent, it got torn down, but in a more permanent form. What the tabernacle was, it was a tent for God. You can imagine what was going on as the people of Israel have come out of Egypt, and they're in the wilderness. They've been wandering for a couple of months now, and they don't know yet that they're going to wander for 40 years. They haven't yet provoked God all the way to the point of that pronouncement yet. But they're out there camping. They're not ultimately a nomadic people, but they're in a nomadic stage of their lives, and God says that he's going to come and have a tent in the middle of their tents. They're camped all around, there's 12 tribes, and they have a certain way of, this pattern of arrangement of camping. But God now says, I'm going to come, and you need to build me the biggest, most important, most beautiful, most spectacular tent, and you've got all your little tents, and I'm going to have my big one right in the middle to show that I am with you. to represent his presence on the camping trip of the wilderness, right in the middle of his people. Now think of that. Man walked with God in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve, they walked with God. But what happened when they sinned against God? Well, they were terrified. They hid themselves from God. God made clothing for them out of animal skins in order to cover up their shame, and then he expelled them from the garden. And they weren't in his presence anymore. They were kicked out. And you know what was standing at the edge of that garden to keep them from coming back in? Well, it was the cherubim. These angels of God that were tasked with holding these flaming swords to make sure that they weren't allowed to just waltz right back in to the presence of God again. Now, man needs to be with God, but it's also a terrifying thing to be with God as a sinner. This is what we saw when they first came to Mount Sinai. That's where they're standing right now, by the way. All the people are at the base of this mountain called Sinai. Moses has walked up to the top of this mountain. Moses, their leader. And Moses is receiving these instructions. This is what we're reading right now is instructions from God to Moses. But the reason that the people had asked for Moses to be the one to go and get those instructions is because they couldn't handle hearing straight from God. When they first got there, God spoke directly to all of the people. The lines that he spoke to them are what we call the Ten Commandments. And when he spoke out of the mountain, he spoke out of the appearance of fire covering the top of the mountain, and he spoke with a voice that was so booming and so loud that the people thought that they would die if they continued to hear him. And so they begged Moses, please don't let God speak to us directly anymore. That's the way that they felt when God was dwelling high up, far off on a mountain that they could see, and speaking to them. But now you know what God is saying? He's saying, I'm going to come and live right in the middle of you, so make me a tent. Make me a tent in the middle of your campsite. This would be like if you're in your suburban neighborhood, and you say, well, things are pretty normal around here, and then God says, make me a mansion right in the middle of your subdivision, because I want you all to know that I'm there, and I'm with you, and I see you. That's a little bit scary. And yet, it's gracious, because God's going to do this in a way, through this tabernacle, representing how is it that this terrifying God can come, not in wrath, but in grace and in peace toward his people. Now, what does this represent? What does this point us to? Well, it represents and points us to Jesus. Jesus is the one that the tabernacle is about. It says in John 1.14, the Word became flesh, that's Jesus. He has been the eternal Word of God from eternity past, the second person of the Trinity, God the Son. He became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. When it says, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that word dwelt, it's literally saying He came and He tabernacled among us. It's just like when God came down into the tabernacle, except that tabernacling in the wilderness was pointing forward to the greater reality of God coming in the flesh, and the person of Jesus, and being right there in the middle of His people. You know what's happened now that Jesus has come and he's accomplished his work on earth. He has lived the perfect life. He has died in the place of sinners on the cross. He was buried. He was raised on the third day. And then he ascended into heaven. And he said that it was better for us that he go away from us, because if he didn't go away, then he wouldn't send the Holy Spirit. So he's still dwelling with us now because he sent the Holy Spirit, his very own Spirit, who now indwells individual believers. When you come to faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to tabernacle and dwell inside of you. 1 Corinthians 6 says that you do not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The rest of the New Testament, whenever it talks about the Holy Spirit's temple on earth, it's not talking about individuals. It's talking about the church, that we are built up together as living stones, as this dwelling place for the Holy Spirit, this temple of the Holy Spirit. So He has come in Jesus. Jesus has come and tabernacled among us. He's away from us now, but he's with us now also by the Holy Spirit who indwells us individually as believers and who indwells us corporately as a church. And one day, we are going to be in his presence, tabernacling, not camping, but permanently situated with Him forever and ever, as He will dwell among His people, and be our God, and we will be His people." Here's Revelation 21, verses 1 through 3. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God." Guys, that's what we need. We need to be there on that day. Don't be one of the ones who is in the lake of fire on that day, whose name is not found written in the Lamb's book of life from before the foundation of the world. Come to faith in Jesus now, because He is the one who was, and the one who is, and the one who is coming. He is coming, and let that day, when you meet God, let that day be a day of joy, because you've already come to Christ. Don't let that be a day of terror. That's what's mixed together here with the tabernacle. There's a little bit of terror. God is coming to be with us, that guy who our whole land shook when he spoke the Ten Commandments to us from the mountain, but there's also the comfort. God, my God, my gracious God, He is showing us mercy because He is making a way to come and to be with us, to be our God and for us to be His people. And that ultimately comes through faith in Jesus Christ. Secondly, the tabernacle is picturing heaven on earth. Let's see a little bit of what we already saw in verse 1, and I'll read through verse 6 as well. You make the tabernacle with 10 curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns. You shall make them with the cherubim skillfully worked into them. The length of each curtain shall be 28 cubits. A cubit is a foot and a half. And the breadth of each curtain, four cubits. All the curtains shall be the same size. Five curtains shall be coupled to one another and the other five curtains shall be coupled to one another. And you shall make loops of blue on the edge of the outermost curtains in the first set. Likewise, you shall make loops on the edge of the outermost curtain in the second set. Fifty loops you shall make on the one curtain, and fifty loops you shall make on the edge of the curtain that is in the second set. The loops shall be opposite one another, and you shall make fifty clasps of gold, and couple the curtains to one another with the clasps, so that the tabernacle may be a single whole. Now what you see here is instructions for the lowest layer of the tent, okay? So if you can picture a frame tent, a frame tent, and it's gonna describe the frame later, but you have to have some sort of covering laying over the top of the tent. Now in the tabernacle, there were four different coverings. And part of the reason to have four is so that nobody but the people who were supposed to would see the bottom layer. And that's what we're describing right now is the bottom layer. This would have been as you walked into the tabernacle, and I say you, you and I wouldn't have been the ones to walk into the tabernacle. We'll talk about that in just a minute. Almost nobody got to do that. But those who did get to do that, the priests who went in, what they would have seen in the walls and draped up onto the ceilings is this lowest layer. These 10 curtains that were long and just wide enough so that when they had 10 that were connected together that it would cover up the whole length and sides of that structure. But what they looked like, it said that they're blue and purple and scarlet yarns with fine twined linen with cherubim skillfully worked into them. So what you see there is you see these blues and reds and purples with sort of these golden patterns of angels worked into it. Now there's been a lot that's been read into these color designs and these loops and a lot of the things that are listed in this chapter. I looked at a certain author even this week who I was very hopeful about. And he began his description by saying, we shouldn't read things into this design that are not there. That's been done poorly throughout history. And then he jumped right into saying, well, the red represents the blood of Jesus and the blue represents the righteousness and heaven and all this kind of stuff. It's just, you know, you can kind of see where somebody's coming from who says that stuff, but it's just not in the text. And it's the kind of stuff where, well, if my mind related red to something else, then I would just relate it to something else. And so we can't just make up or just go along with all these ideas that are not actually shown to us in the text of scripture about what this stuff represents. But what I think we can do is we can look at the general picture that's painted here, and we can compare it to what the New Testament says about this, and sometimes even the words about it in the Old Testament as well, describing the symbolism, and we can say, hey, this actually meant something. We don't have to throw out all symbolism, because God tells us some of the symbolism. And in particular, the patterns that are there, just try to picture it for yourself what that would have looked like with red and blue and purple skillfully worked together. We don't know what exactly the patterns of that looked like. And then also with these built-in sewn in skillfully crafted pictures of angels flying around in the middle of that. And this is going to be to your sides, it's going to be all the way up the walls, it's going to be up over your head. I mean, just the plain picture of that, as far as I can imagine, it's a picture of heaven. It's a picture of the night sky, of the sunset turning into the night and angels flying around. It's almost a feeling like if you go to the planetarium, That you go in there, and it's dark, and it starts to light up, and you're inside, but you're getting a picture of the heavens in front of you. That's kind of what was going on with this. Now again, you could just say, oh, well, that's just the way that Pastor Daniel thinks about it. That's just what he thinks it looks like. Well, let me give you some scripture from the New Testament about this. It says that in Hebrews 8.5, that the tabernacle was, quote, a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. Now, some would take that to mean, well, every single description of every single part of the construction process must be some kind of a symbol of a spiritual thing. Well, I don't think that that's quite what it says, but I do think it's saying here, hey, this is intended to be a picture of heaven. and to give somebody who walked in there a feeling of, hey, I'm not about earthly things anymore. I'm about the God of heaven who lives here, that his real dwelling place is in the heavens, and that I'm getting just a tiny glimpse of it here on earth. Here's what it says in Hebrews 9, 23 and 24, it was necessary for the copies of heavenly things, that's what it's called, copies of heavenly things, to be purified with these rites. But the heavenly things themselves, now in Hebrews he's moving from the copies from the tabernacle to think about, let's think about real heaven. The heavenly things themselves needed to be purified with better sacrifices than the ones that would happen there, than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. So as we have that blue and purple and scarlet and the pictures, the angels, there's the little picture there on earth of, hey, a priest is going into something of the heavenly presence of God to work on behalf of the people. And it's a little picture, according to Hebrews 9, to show us the real substance that's casting the shadow. That real substance is Jesus. Jesus is the great high priest who walked not into the tabernacle or the temple, but into the real heaven itself to offer the perfect sacrifice of himself on our behalf. The tabernacle gave a little picture that we need to look to Jesus. What did Jesus do when he walked into the real tabernacle, to the real temple, to the real heaven on our behalf? Well, it says Ephesians 2.6 that God raised us up with Jesus and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We, believer, when you have come to faith in Jesus, You have a seat in heaven with Jesus right now. We don't see it yet, but we set our minds there. Just like the Israelites themselves, they weren't able to see inside of that tabernacle. They never got a glimpse in there, unless they happened to be one of the very few priests who got to go inside. And yet they were constantly wondering, what does it look like in there? What's going on in there? I wish I could just see that table and that candelabra. I wish I could see the Ark of the Covenant. I wish I could see the beautiful designs on those beautiful curtains that are blocked from our view by the outer layers. And you know what? We don't see heaven yet, but we have a seat there. And we have an advocate there with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is interceding for us. Our place there is settled. And Colossians 3 says, set your minds on the things that are above and not on the things that are on earth. So that's part of what we're called to as Christians, considering the tabernacle. Boy, those beautiful things that are covered up that look like heaven. I want to set my mind on what I can't see yet, the real heaven. We have come to something now. that is better than these copies. It says in Hebrews 12, 22 to 24, you have come, that's you who believe, you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. One of the things that tells us that it's not just you, believer. It is you and all your brothers and sisters in Christ, and we have come to this assembly of God on earth that pictures the assembly of God in heaven. That's part of why it hurts not to have church right now, because God intends the assembly of the saints on earth to be a picture for us and for the world. of the true assembly in heaven. We get a little taste every time we come together as a church of what it's going to be like to come together in heaven. And I hope that this is making your hearts long for that on earth, and I hope that it's making your hearts long for that even more in heaven as we're apart from each other right now. But what we're called to be, what we are, we're a little picture of heaven as a church, and we're called to set our hearts on the better picture. that's pictured at the tabernacle, that is where Jesus has gone into the heavens themselves with a better sacrifice. Third, we have building with the instruction manual. I'm gonna read a big chunk here. I'm gonna read a big chunk of construction instructions. So get yourself ready and pay attention. You're going to want to zone out. Please don't. Chapter 26, verse seven. through 30. I'm going to read that big chunk right now. You shall also make the curtains of goats hair. for a tent over the tabernacle. Eleven curtains you shall make. The length of each curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits. The eleven curtains shall be the same size. You shall couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and the sixth curtain you shall double over at the front of the tent. You shall make fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is the outermost in one set, and fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is the outermost on the second set. You shall make 50 clasps of bronze and put the clasps into the loops and couple the tent together that it may be a single whole. And the part that remains of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remains shall hang over the back of the tabernacle. And the extra that remains in the length of the curtains, the cubit on the one side and the cubit on the other side shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle on this side and that side to cover it. And you shall make for the tent a covering of tan ram skins and a covering of goat skins on top. You shall make upright frames for the tabernacle of acacia wood. Ten cubits shall be the length of a frame, and a cubit and a half the breadth of each frame. There shall be two tenons in each frame for fitting together, so shall you do for all the frames of the tabernacle. You shall make the frames for the tabernacle 20 frames for the south side, and 40 bases of silver you shall make under the 20 frames, two bases under the one frame for its two tenons, and two bases under the next frame for its two tenons, and for the second side of the tabernacle on the north side 20 frames. And there are forty bases of silver, two bases under one frame, and two bases under the next frame. And for the rear of the tabernacle westward you shall make six frames. And you shall make two frames for the corners of the tabernacle in the rear. They shall be separate beneath, but joined at the top, at the first ring. Thus shall it be with both of them. They shall from the two corners, form of the two corners. And there shall be eight frames with their bases of silver, 16 bases, two bases under one frame, and two bases under another frame. You shall make the bars of acacia wood. for the frames of the one side of the tabernacle and five bars for the frames of the other side of the tabernacle and five bars for the frames of the side of the tabernacle at the rear westward. The middle bar halfway up the frames shall run from end to end. You shall overlay the frames with gold and shall make their rings of gold for holders for the bars and you shall overlay the bars with gold. Then you shall erect the tabernacle according to the plan for it that you were shown on the mountain. All right. That was some construction instructions. And to help us picture that, I brought this model. So my son Ben made this model. He's 10 years old right now. And we were trying to figure out how old he was when he made this. I think he was seven or eight, possibly. And so what you see here is you have the outer courtyard of the tabernacle, which would have been very large. that's going to be described later on. Then within here, this is the place where the altar and the basin would have gone, where the sacrifices were happening, and there were some pieces that represented that in the model, and I didn't want to lose those, so I left those in their proper place at home today. But what we just read about here was the construction of this piece right here, the tent of the tabernacle. Now what you see, I don't know how well you can see this on the camera at home, but the way that you would have seen it, just like here, is on the very outside you just see these animal skins draped over. And that's essentially all that anybody sees unless they're standing on the east side where the sun shines. And if they're standing on the east side where the sun shines, especially in the morning, they're gonna get a brilliant view of these five golden pillars that are at the front that would light up in the sunrise and have something of an entrance, just a grand entrance there to the dwelling place of God. It's something where you're looking around here and you see, well, that's a big tent. And then you catch a glimpse a little bit over the fence of the courtyard of just the grandeur of somebody lives there. This is not just any tent. This is an amazing place. And within there, there were four different layers of this covering. So we already described the first one. The bottom layer is the one that would have formed the inner walls and ceiling of the tabernacle that would have only been seen by the priests. Above that there was a covering of goat's hair. Now some people read lots of different meanings into why goats hair, what's the spiritual meaning of that? Probably it's just because it was a protective layer to make sure that that really fine linen underneath didn't get messed up. And then above that there was a layer of these ram skins, and then above that there was this final layer. I believe it says goat skins in the translation that I just read. Some people think that it means badger skins. Some people think that it means dolphin skins or manatee skins. It's some sort of animal skin, but what this would have done is on the outside you just got a sort of a raw looking protective layer. It's going to be waterproof. It's going to keep everything inside safe through the sun and the sandstorms and everything that's coming. in the direction of this moving campsite. But with all of that, what you have is you have hidden underneath the beauty and the grandeur of what is going on. There's instructions that we read for the pillars and these sort of ladder-like structures around the side that are going to hold it up. But that's the general idea of it. I would encourage you, if you never have or if you haven't recently, you can go on YouTube and just type in design of the tabernacle and there's lots of people who have made these fantastic videos. Of course, there's illustrations all over the place, lots of study bibles have this, but I really like those videos where you can kind of get this animated sort of like fly-through picture of what the tabernacle would have looked like and where they lift up the different layers. so you can see what was inside, which they wouldn't have been able to do as the Israelites that time to see inside. But with all of that, I want to think a little bit here about just the tediousness of these instructions. What we just read with these tedious instructions, this is a place where when we come to these things, we think to ourselves, I know that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for us, that it's intended to make us complete in Christ, to build us up, to train us in righteousness, and yet, this is directions, and these are harder to follow than what I get for my Ikea furniture. I mean, this is tedious stuff. There's a lesson there in itself, just in the tedious nature of what it is. There is a temptation to be bored with this, and yet God gave us these specific instructions, and God gave Moses and these people these specific instructions for his purposes, for his glory. He didn't say, well, I'm just going to only give you the juicy parts. I'm only going to give you the parts that are really interesting to you. God is not seeker sensitive. God is not saying, I'm going to just find the parts that are going to really rile people up. And let's just get rid of these instructions and put in a bunch of zip lines. And that'll really get people excited. No, he has a pattern. And it says in verse 30 that he has an exact pattern. He said to Moses, you shall erect the tabernacle according to the plan for it, that you are shown on the mountain. So as we have all of these detailed writings, and now if you were an actual construction person, you would probably say, this is not detailed enough. I need more details than this if I'm going to know exactly how to do this. Well, Moses had that. He got to look at a picture, apparently, according to verse 30, of exactly what this was supposed to look like. He saw it for himself. And so he had the written instructions and he also had the memory of the picture that God showed him of here is what this is supposed to look like. And it mattered to God. It mattered not just that they had some system of worship, not just that they had some sort of place that represented his presence, but that they do it according to his design. and the tedious nature of that shows that God is glorified in our following tedious instructions about unglorious, unexciting things. I say unglorious, I mean unglamorous. We tend to want things things to think about and to do that are exciting, that are glamorous. But if God calls us to be faithful in the things that are tedious and that are not glamorous, it is still for the glory of God. It is still so that we can glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We may think to ourselves, well, I'm going to have more joy in God if I just skip to the exciting parts. Well, no, that's not the way to have joy in Jesus. We trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey, says the old hymn. And this is part of it. We trust God. We come to a part of the scriptures where we say, well, that's not the most exciting verse I've ever read. I trust that what God says is true, and I want to follow God and what He says is right. He calls us to be faithful in those things for His glory. If God has said that something needs to be a certain way, then He said it for His glory, and we can do it for His glory. Now, most directly applying this for us, This shows us that as Christians that we need to take even the parts that are not exciting to us about how the church ought to be arranged and built up, to take those things seriously. Most directly, now that Christ has come, the tedious instructions for the tabernacle relate to the proper ordering of the church according to the commands and examples of the Bible. The tabernacle led to the temple, the temple pointed to Jesus, And it still points to Jesus, all of it points to Jesus, but while Jesus is away from us again, he said that we're representing him in his body, the church, in his building, the church, in his temple for now, the church. It says in 1 Corinthians 3.10, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but I just want to reiterate this. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid the foundation. Paul's saying, I came in and I was the one that God used to plant this church, to preach the gospel here and to get this church in Corinth started. He said, I laid the foundation of this building that is the church. And he says, and someone else is now building on it, and let each one take care how he builds on it. So when we see tedious instructions for the building of the tabernacle and the building of the temple, we need to remember it matters to God how we arrange and do His place of worship. And we need to look intently to the commands and the examples of the Bible to take seriously what they say. Just one example, this came up on Thursday. If you watch the Thursday live stream devotionals, we just started Philippians in those, Thursdays at noon. And here's just a verse that came up this week, Philippians 1.1, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus to all the saints in Christ who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons. Now we say to ourselves, well, is that the greatest, most exhilarating verse from my faith that I've ever read? Well, probably not. And yet it gives us some instructions there. It says, here's what a church is. It's the saints who are in Christ Jesus. A church is to be a gathering of believers, those who are saints. It is to be those of us who have decided that we are together as believers, regenerate church membership built in right there, and that there are two offices that God has appointed within the church, overseers and deacons. Deacons we know, overseers are also called pastors or also called elders. So we see that, and we also see that there's multiple deacons in one church, and multiple overseers, multiple elders in one church. And that's something that we are striving toward here at our church as well, is to have multiple elders. And when we have discussions like that, some would say, well, okay, that's all right, but let's get back to the gospel. You know what, I agree, I agree. The gospel is the diamond of our faith, alright? Nobody was going to claim, hey, whether or not we get all of the instructions just right for the tabernacle, that's going to be the deciding factor for whether or not God is our Savior. Nobody thought that, I don't think. Maybe some people thought that. Nobody thinks, well, if we don't get everything exactly right according to the instructions of the New Testament for how we order the church, then we're all going to be lost. We don't think that. The gospel is the point. We believe in God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. The way God has arranged it in the Old Testament is that the beauty of this dwelling place of God among man, It's demonstrating God's willingness to save sinners. It is showing off the gospel in the tabernacle, in the wilderness. And what the church does is it shows off the gospel. So you can think of it that it's like a diamond ring. And the diamond, the diamond is what's beautiful. The diamond is what makes it valuable and amazing. And God has also given a setting for the diamond. And so you had the gospel with the setting of the tabernacle in the Old Testament, the gospel with the setting of the church in the New Testament. If we get the setting wrong, the gospel is still the gospel. It's still going to save sinners, and yet we can draw attention to it and just show off the beauty of the gospel by doing the setting, by doing church in the way that God has said that it should be done. So we want to do those things that may seem non-essential, may even be non-essential, and yet God's given us instructions about them, even if those things are unglamorous. We want to do that to make the diamond of the gospel look awesome. Number four, we've got restricted access. Restricted access that's represented here in the tabernacle. Look at verse 31. It says, you shall make a veil of blue. A veil. This is a covering, this is a curtain that people are not to pass except in very specific circumstances. Make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen. It shall be made with cherubim skillfully worked into it. And you shall hang it on four pillars of acacia overlaid with gold, with hooks of gold on four bases of silver and you shall hang the veil from the clasps and bring the ark of the testimony in there within the veil. And the veil shall separate for you the holy place from the most holy place. You shall put the mercy seat on the ark of the testimony in the most holy place. And you shall set the tabernacle, excuse me, you shall set the table outside the veil and the lamp stand on the south side of the tabernacle opposite the table. And you shall put the table on the north side. You shall make a screen for the entrance of the tent, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen embroidered with needlework. and you shall make for the screen five pillars of acacia, and overlay them with gold. Their hooks shall be of gold, and you shall cast five bases of bronze for them." What you have here is you have instructions about these tents, these veils within the tent, these veils of separation, these veils of exclusivity, these veils of restricted access. You had two veils that were described. The second one that was described, I'll just show you again right here. It's this first veil as you were on the outside of the, if you're standing in the courtyard or even peering over the fence from the outside, then you would see this right here where there's these beautiful pillars in front, but then behind the pillars there's this mysterious veil of blue and purple and scarlet, and it looks beautiful. Now there are no cherubim worked into that one. There are cherubim worked into the next veil that represent something like those cherubim guarding the the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were kicked out. This is restricted access. That first veil, it guarded the entrance to the tabernacle itself. Only priests could go into that first room. They would go in there on a regular basis to make sure that they tended the lamps on the lampstand, that the oil kept burning with this light before the table. They would go in there to change out the bread of the presence. once a week that represented the presence of God with His twelve tribes of Israel. But only once a year could anyone go past that second veil, not just into the holy place of the outer room, but into the holy of holies of the inner room where the Ark of the Covenant sat. The high priest could go in there once a year on the Day of Atonement to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat of God. There was no opening in the middle. There was no door in this. We don't know exactly how they went through. They would have had to go through on the side somehow. It wasn't built in such a way as to let people go through easily. Not the inner veil, not the outer veil either. There was a restriction here. If you were not one of the Jewish people, not one of the Hebrew people, you might not have been allowed in the camp at all. If you were allowed in the camp and you managed to come along as some of those Gentiles did when they escaped Egypt, then you would have been allowed somewhere around. Some of the Jewish people would have come into the courtyard, they would have brought their sacrifices on behalf of their families and their tribes. The priests and the Levites would have been working in that courtyard. But then, even the Levites themselves, unless they were priests, they couldn't go in at all. And even the priests, they could only go into the outer room unless it was the one man, the high priest, could go into the inner room only once a year. And as I said earlier, all the rest of the people would have looked and would have thought, what does it look like in there? I can only imagine. I can't see. I can't see the Ark of the Covenant. They would have never seen the Ark of the Covenant, even when they took up the tent and moved, because it was wrapped in cloths before they did that. That's what it tells us in the book of Numbers. They wouldn't have seen it. It was restricted. Right there is built in something of the holiness of God. You cannot just presume to come to God. You can't just barge in to the presence of God. You can't just show up to God and say, God, here I am, take me. Because we are sinners, and he is holy, and the wages of sin is death. But in Christ, we have the free gift of God, which is eternal life. And Jesus, by His body and in His shed blood, He has torn open the veil. He has opened up free access to the inner places because He is our great High Priest. The temple and the tabernacle, they represented that it is hard to get to God. Not anybody can just stroll up there. And that's still the case in a sense. because you can't just go up to God. But if you are in Christ Jesus, if you are a believer in Jesus, then you are united with Christ and He has brought you in. You're there already if you're in Jesus. You're not even on the outside waiting to go in. He has brought you already. He has applied His saving work to you by faith and brought you into the presence of God, not for judgment, but for gracious peace and forgiveness and life and joy in his glory forever and ever. When Jesus died, it says in Matthew 27.51. By the way, on your outline, I wrote the wrong verse, but it's Matthew 27.51. It says, Behold, when Jesus had died, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split. Remember, I said there was no entryway in the middle of the curtain. You would have had to find some way around it if you were one of those special people who went in. Well, what Jesus did, He ripped it down the middle. When He died, God ripped it. Was it to let people in? Was it to let God out? Both. It was both. It was to show that there is free, unrestricted access to God for all who are in Christ Jesus. He made the way for us to be with God. It says this explicitly in Hebrews 10, 19 through 22. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Guys, that is good news. James says that as believers in Jesus, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. in peace and in love. He will wrap His arms around you. You won't come to Him as a terrifying judge, but you'll come to Him as a loving Father. Your heart will be crying out, Abba, Father, and He will see you as His perfect child, because you're united to His perfect Son, Jesus. We come by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way, through His flesh, and He's brought us in. Now, we come to Him right now. You can come to Him right now. I want to tell you this too. If you are on the outside looking in, if your faith is not in Christ, you can come to Him right now. Not by just presuming that you can. That's not what I'm saying. Not by just saying, God forgives sinners, so He better let me in. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you can come to Him right now by repenting of your sin, by believing in Jesus, by turning to Christ the Savior. And if you throw yourself on the mercy of Jesus, He will give you His mercy and His grace, and He will usher you in to the presence of God in peace and in joy, and you'll be there with Him forever and ever. I do want to mention that the dimensions that are listed here that we saw earlier about the holy of holies, That is a cubic design. You had, I'm gonna speak in terms of feet instead of cubits, but you've got about 45 feet long and 15 feet wide of this tabernacle. And then within that, there's the inner room. It's the Holy of Holies. It's 15 feet by 15 feet by 15 feet. 10 by 10 by 10 cubits. It is a cube. That carries over into the temple. It is a cube on the inside. There is only one other place in the Bible that's described as having cubic dimensions. The only other cube in the Bible, besides the Holy of Holies, is the New Jerusalem. It's in Revelation 21, as God is talking about where it is that he will dwell with his people, in person, in the flesh, forever and ever. In the New Jerusalem it says, the city lies four square, its length the same as its width. He measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia, which is well over 1,000 miles. Its length and width and height are equal. Why does it say it's length and width or height or equal? It's because in Christ we are going to be in the very presence of God forever and ever and ever, and we'll be there in peace through faith in Jesus who has ushered us in. So as we can't see into the tabernacle, every time you look at a model of the tabernacle and you see this, and you see, well, I thought it was gonna look exciting, but it just looks like this weird animal skin tent thing, and I don't see anything particularly interesting. We all have to, just looking from the outside, you have to just imagine what's in there. Well, keep your heart set on what's in there, and keep your heart set on what it pictures. Keep your heart set on where you really are, where your great high priest really is right now. Set your mind on heavenly things, and not on things that are on earth. Draw near to God in Christ, and He will draw near to you. Let me pray for us. God, I thank You that Jesus has gone into the heavenly places, that He's gone not into the shadows and copies, but into the real thing. And He's come and He has broken open the veil by His death for us. God, I thank You that He has come as the High Priest and the Sacrificial Lamb at the same time. I thank you that he is the one mediator between God and man, and I thank you that as those who are united to Jesus, that we have free access into the Holy of Holies forever and ever. God, we look forward to that. We look forward to being in your presence in gracious peace through the blood of Jesus. God, I pray for any who are not in Christ right now. Lord, they may not even understand what I'm talking about when I say not in Christ, but God, I pray for those whose faith and hope and love are not centered on Jesus alone. God, I pray that you would cause them to forsake whatever those things are centered on and to lay aside their love of sin and to love Christ who died for their sin. God, I pray that as those who have been redeemed by the Lamb, that you would just cause us to rejoice in knowing that He is coming again to take us directly into your presence for all time. And it's in Jesus' name I pray, amen.