Our text this evening is a very long one, three whole chapters in length, or a bit more, because we have been over virtually every word of it already. So we're not going to read the whole text, just going to read one or two verses from the beginning of each section of this portion of the text. So Exodus 36 verse 8, then all the gifted artisans among them who worked on the tabernacle made ten curtains woven of fine linen thread and blue and purple and scarlet yarn with artistic designs of cherubim, they made them. And then turn the page to verse 20, for the tabernacle he made boards of acacia wood standing upright. Verse 35, he made a veil woven of blue and purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen thread. It was woven with an artistic design of cherubim. Chapter 37, verse 1, then Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood. Two and a half cubits was its length, a cubit and a half its width, and a cubit and a half its height. Verse 10, he made the table of acacia wood. Two cubits was its length, a cubit its width, and a cubit and a half its height. Verse 17, he also made the lampstand of pure gold. Of hammered work he made the lampstand. Verse 25, he made the incense altar of acacia wood. Chapter 38, verse 1, he made the altar of burnt offering of acacia wood. Verse 8, he made the labor of bronze and its base of bronze from the bronze mirrors of the serving women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Verse 9, then he made the court on the south side. The hangings of the court were woven of fine linen, 100 cubits long. Verse 21, this is the inventory of the tabernacle, the tabernacle of the testimony, which was counted according to the commandment of Moses for the service of the Levites. Chapter 39, verse one, of the blue and purple and scarlet thread, they made garments of ministry for ministering in the holy place and made the holy garments for Aaron as the Lord had commanded Moses. Verse 30, then they made the plate of the holy crown of pure gold and wrote on it an inscription like the engraving of a signet, holiness to the Lord, and they tied it to a blue cord to fasten it above on the turban as the Lord had commanded Moses. Thus, all the work of the tabernacle of meeting was finished, and the children of Israel did according to all that the Lord had commanded Moses. So they did. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that your people enthusiastically assembled the tabernacle as a place for you to dwell. We ask that you would make us equally enthusiastic in working with your son to build his church. Give us the grace now to listen and to delight in what we hear, as you delight to tell us of it. Free us from distraction, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Flying is one of the safest things you can do these days. I read a couple of years ago that there had not been a single fatality on a U.S. commercial airline since 2014. And if there have been one or two since then, it's just that. One or two, compared to the thousands of people who die on highways. Getting on an airplane and going somewhere is much safer than driving across town. So why is commercial, why is flying so safe? The answer is one word, the checklist. Before every flight, every last system and feature on that plane is meticulously gone over and checked off. Nothing is left to chance in the maintenance, in the repairs, in the fueling, in the piloting, in the routing, the loading, or anything else. It's all gone over and checked off item by item by item by the ground crew and the pilots. We've looked verse by verse at the instructions for building the tabernacle. Now we have this huge section, three chapters in length, that describes how every last instruction was carried out. In other words, think of this section as the checked off checklist for the tabernacle. Worshipping God is important. That's the message here. It's so important that it's worth getting it right. That it's worth listing every item that was in the tabernacle and every piece of stuff that went into building it and then saying, yes, check. That's here. Check the next one. It's here too. The table is here. The curtains are here. The boards are here. The veils are here. The ark is here. The small altar is here, the large altar is here, and so on. Every last piece of it is described. This is a common literary feature in temple building accounts from the ancient Near East. First, the god gives instructions on how to build the temple. Then we're told the people built the temple, and it tells us piece by piece how they built it using the same language from the original instructions on how to build it. So when you read all of the chapters about how to build a tabernacle, you say, whew, that was a lot. Then you start over and read them all a second time, because that's how important it is to the Lord. Just as the flight crew checks everything before taking off, so the worship team, the priests and Levites, and the craftsmen were called to check everything before assembling the tabernacle and saying, we have a dwelling place for God. Israel carried out to the letter God's instructions for his dwelling place. How much more then will Christ carry out God's will for his dwelling place? If Israel did it this well, how well will Jesus do it? So there's two things basically in this section. There's building the tabernacle, and then there's furnishing the tabernacle, and we see both of those here. What the tabernacle had within it, or what it was made of, and then what it contained, the furniture, and then the priests who served the tabernacles. So three things that are described here at some length. The first is the curtains. We talked about these in the sermon several months ago. The overwhelming impression that you get from the description of all the curtains is yes, they were beautiful, they were intricate, They were very well made and there's a lot of them. They effectively buried God underneath so many layers of fabric. Where is the Almighty? Well, he's under blue, purple, scarlet, ram skins, badger skins, outer covering. The tabernacle from the outside looks like a pretty featureless gray tent. And on the inside, there's magnificent curtains, but there are so many of them. God is dwelling with us, but he's not exactly living in a glass house. He's with his people, but we should not think that this is the consummate way of living with his people. God is hidden within the tent. Then we have the boards, the frame of the tabernacle. Kind of a similar point here, just There's a lot of boards, there's a frame, it's portable. You can carry it around and set it up and take it down. But the Lord is living here with his people in a very fancy tent. But nonetheless, it's a tent. A place where he travels with his people, where he's hidden from sight, but he is present. The veils kind of say the same thing. Even if you get into the tabernacle, there's still a veil between you and the actual place where God is. God is dwelling among them, but He is still distant from them. So that's basically chapter 36. And then in chapter 37 we have the furniture described there and in the first part of 38, and all of 38, what was in the tabernacle. The first item described is the Ark of the Covenant. The ark represents the gospel. It has the Ten Commandments inside it, the original copies of the Ten Commandments, covered with the mercy seat, or the propitiation, the atonement lid, showing us that the law is covered by the grace of God, by the atonement of Christ. If you break the law, there's a way of forgiveness for you. The Ark was the holiest thing ever made by the hands of men. And it was here in the tabernacle, representing the throne of God. In other ancient Near Eastern temples, if you went to the Holy of Holies, you would see a statue of the God. The tabernacle had no such thing. Rather, it had the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments, and on top of the Ark was a place where the sacrificial blood could be applied to deal with sin and to take it away. The second item of furniture is the table of showbread. The table of showbread with the 12 loaves on it symbolizes the people of God basking in the light of his presence. It conveys the same message that the tabernacle as a whole does, that is the message that God is with us, God dwells with his people. He has his own tent, he travels around with them. Inside the tent is a pictorial representation, 12 loaves of bread, representing the 12 tribes of Israel, stacked on a table, right across from the lamp stand. Seven lamps representing the presence of God, the light of God, shining on the 12 loaves. So the tabernacle pictures the same things inside and out. Outside, it pictures God dwelling with his people in a tent like their tents. Inside, it shows the 12 tribes dwelling and basking in the light of God from the lampstand. The light's on and somebody's home. The light of God is for the people of God. The next item of furniture is the incense altar. which sat in the same room as the table, the lamp stand, the incense altar was right up by the curtain dividing the holy place from the most holy place, symbolizes our prayers ascending to God. God wanted his dwelling place to be permeated with his smell. He gave the perfect recipe and the perfect instructions, make this smell, burn this incense, I want my home to smell this certain way. because smell reminds us, essentially, this is God's. This is holy. This whole place is permeated with the presence of God, just as your whole home is permeated with your presence, even when you're not there. Outside the tabernacle structure sat the altar of burnt offering. Remember, you come in the front gate, and directly in front of you, is the door to the tabernacle but between you and that door sits this huge seven and a half foot square flaming altar with burning bowls on it saying in order to get into the presence of God there must be death, there must be sacrifice, there must be fire and judgment. The altar of burnt offering says there's no entry without sacrifice. Then we have an intriguing note that is not in the earlier part in the instructions. But God spoke to Moses and said, make a laver of bronze for washing. That's back in chapter 30. But here we hear about this special offering. He made the laver of bronze and its base of bronze from the bronze mirrors of the serving women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Now, these women are only mentioned one other time in Scripture, which is in 1 Samuel, where we're told that Eli the priest's sons, Eli's sons, were committing adultery with these women. Otherwise, we don't know why they were at the doors, what they did there, etc. But there's an intriguing note here that they gave their mirrors. Now, it's easy to read over that and say, oh yeah, A mirror. Wow. Well, you can buy a mirror for 50 cents. But in those days, you could not buy a mirror for 50 cents. A mirror was hard to come by. Most likely, right? Presumably, the typical Israelite woman enslaved in Egypt did not have a mirror. and did not acquire a mirror until that night, mentioned at the beginning of the book, when God gave them favor with the Egyptians so that the Egyptians said, take whatever you want and just get out of here, go, we'll give you anything you want, leave, please. And then on that night, many an Israelite woman probably said, could I have your mirror? And the Israelite woman's mistress who kept her enslaved was like, sure, just get out before you kill anybody else. So these women who had been slaves for centuries with very little of their own, now are the proud owners of mirrors. They're suddenly able to, oh, hey, I can make myself look a little nicer here. They keep these mirrors for a few months through the wilderness wanderings. And then when the time comes to build the tabernacle, they are willing to part with the mirror and give it for the worship of God. They say, right, you... A polished bronze mirror is hard to make, and it also doesn't reflect very well. If you've ever, say, looked at yourself in the side of a car or something like that, you know that even the shiniest of metal isn't the most accurate mirror. But it was what they had. Yet, they gave these mirrors willingly. How many mirrors would it take to make a large bronze basin that could hold hundreds of gallons? Lots and lots of mirrors. And these women voluntarily handed them over because the grace of God changes hearts and reorders priorities. They said, I care more about the worship of God and the cleanliness of my priest than I do about being able to check my hair and makeup every morning. This is pretty wild. It's just a little note that right in the middle of these long directions that are copied from the previous chapters to say, the women gave to this. They dedicated the labor for the priests to wash in. Finally, we're told that, well, in terms of the tabernacle proper, the courtyard was made, Bezalel made everything for it. Again. Courtyard emphasizes the Lord's distance, His holiness, His separation. If you build a giant fence around your yard and put your house in the middle as far from the fence as possible, you're not saying, oh, I want to be really close to you, neighbor. You're saying, give me my space. I'll come out and talk with you if I need to. God built the tabernacle inside a large fenced zone. Then we have the list of the materials. We looked at that very briefly last week. We won't talk about that again. On to chapter 39 where the priest's clothes are described. We talked about these at length. Remember the priest wears the breastplate that has the names of the children of Israel carved on it. They're also carved on the stones on his shoulders. He's wearing the names of Israel here and here to say I am representing Israel before God." He comes into the presence of God and stands there as priest to say, I am in their place. I am ministering on their behalf. These special holy garments are what make the priests priestly. Exodus 28 tells us this. The garments, well, the linen underwear shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they enter the tent of meeting or when they approach the altar to minister in the holy place so that they do not incur guilt and die. It shall be a statute forever to him and to his descendants after him. The priests could not minister without these special clothes. They were threatened with death if they attempted to enter the holy place without their priestly clothing. The clothing is what made them priests. To approach God without being clothed in this glorious priestly garb is to bear your guilt and die, because the Levitical priesthood is derivative. These priests were made priests by their clothes. Jesus is made a priest by the power of an indestructible life. So it's very important how these clothes were made as with all the rest of it. That's why we're told piece by piece by piece. Here's how the clothes were put together. Without these clothes, there is no priestly ministry. The tabernacle is a waste. Maybe God can dwell there. But he can't dwell there long because the priests won't be able to operate it and take away Israel's sin and allow God to continue to live there. The priest's task is to be holy. These priests literally wear a label that says, holy to the Lord, on their forehead. In case you missed it, so that when you see a priest, you can say, all right, I understand that this man exists for God. He is holy. Well, that is a whirlwind tour of how the tabernacle was constructed. What do we take away from this? Well, one application is historical or informational. Israel really did build a tabernacle in the wilderness so God could dwell with him. Another application is about our own worship. God described every detail of how to do this. And we should understand that when God wants to be worshipped, when he wants to dwell with us, he has a certain way that he wants it to be done. No longer does he specify the color of the walls or that we should have cherubim every so often. But the God who regulates worship this closely hasn't changed. He still wants us to worship Him the way He wants, not the way we think He might like. But I think the most important application relates not to what we do, per se, but to the greater Bezalel. Bezalel is the artisan who makes all of this and leads the building of the tabernacle. He is a type of Christ the great temple builder. If this much attention to detail was paid to the tent by an ordinary, mortal, fallible man, how much better is the church that Jesus is building? Jesus does everything right. He's building his church. He's furnishing his church. He's servicing his church. Christ is at work, that's his great promise, I will build my church. Our view is very limited, very parochial. We might know quite a bit about how our own local church is doing. something about the church in Wyoming or the church in the United States, maybe a little bit about the church in other countries that we read or hear, but as much as any of us knows about this church or what all of us know about this church, put together, Jesus knows more. He knows everything there is to know about every church, and he is building the global church by building each individual church exactly as He desires. So we shouldn't despair or give up or say, oh, our church, oh, there's so much growth. There's so much room for growth, so much room for improvement. Jesus is at work. He will build His church. Hell can't stop Him. The parishioners who really annoy you can't stop Him. Life, death, angels, principalities, powers, height, depth, none of these things is an obstacle in the path of Christ, the temple builder. Most of us, I think, would just say a priori. You take two million people out into the desert, and then you ask them to come up with blue and purple and scarlet yarn, white linen fabric, gold, silver, and bronze. we would probably say, that's not very realistic. Sinai is a terrible place to try to build a big tent like this. And yet, it worked. Israel built it, somehow. And we can look at how God is building the church, the foolishness of preaching, and so on, and we can say, you can't build a church here. What are you doing, Jesus? But if we say that, we miss the point. He is building the church, just as Bezalel built the tabernacle, and he is going to succeed. The church will be built. How do we participate in that? We have to be living stones who come to him and say, place me, put me in your church, give me something to do, Let me be part of this temple which you're building. There are times either when we back out, say, I don't want to be a stone, or when we try to do too much and say, I'll be the architect on this project. I'm going to build this church. Both of those are wrong. The wilderness of this world, the gates of hell, can't stop Jesus from building the church. The way you and I participate is by submitting to his vision for the church and serving in the place to which he calls us. That's going to be different, most likely, for each one of us. That's because we're living stones fitted exactly into the fabric of the structure. Jesus is building his temple. Submit to him. Worship him as he desires. Do what he wants you to do in the church. and he will dwell in your midst. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that Bezalel built the tabernacle and that Jesus is building the church. Father, encourage our hearts. Strengthen us in that knowledge that your son will not fail, that he has counted the cost, that he knows exactly what he needs to finish this tower, and that he has made the necessary provisions We thank you that he paid the price. With his own blood, he purchased the church for himself. Lord, help us to submit to Jesus' vision for the church, to get on board with it, to do and to be exactly what he wants us to do and to be within his body. We pray these things in the name of Christ, amen.