The Tabernacle Exodus 26

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August 21, 2022 - Sunday Morning Message Faith Bible Church - Sacramento, CA "The Tabernacle" Exodus 26"

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Please turn with me to Exodus chapter 26, Exodus chapter 26.
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I will be preaching from the whole chapter, Exodus chapter 26. Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine woven linen and blue, purple, and scarlet thread.
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With artistic designs of cherubim you shall weave them. The length of each curtain shall be twenty -eight cubits, and the width of each curtain four cubits, and every one of the curtains shall have the same measurements.
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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 yarn on the edge of the curtain, and the selvedge of one set, and likewise you shall do on the outer edge of the other curtain of the second set.
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Fifty loops you shall make in one curtain, and fifty loops you shall make on the edge of the curtain that is on the end of the second set, and the loops may be clasped to one another.
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And you shall make fifty clasps of gold, and couple the curtains together with the clasps, so that it may be one tabernacle.
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You shall also make curtains of goat's hair to be the tent over the tabernacle.
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You shall make eleven curtains, and the length of each curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the width of each curtain four cubits, and the eleven curtains shall all have the same measurements.
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And you shall couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and you shall double over the sixth curtain at the forefront of the tent.
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You shall make fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is outermost in one set, and the fifty loops on the edge of the curtain on the second set.
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And you shall make fifty bronze clasps, but the clasps into the loops, put the clasps into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one.
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The remnant that remains on the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remains, shall hang over the back of the tabernacle.
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And a cubit on one side, and a cubit on the other side, of what remains on the length of the curtains of the tent, shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle, on this side and on that side, to cover it.
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You shall also make a covering of ram skins dyed red for the tent, and covering of badger skins above that.
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And for the tabernacle you shall make the boards of acacia wood standing upright.
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Ten cubits shall be the length on the board, and a cubit and a half shall be the width of each board.
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Two tenons shall be in each board, for binding one to another. Thus you shall make for all the boards of the tabernacle.
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And you shall make the boards for the tabernacle twenty boards for the south side. You shall make forty sockets of silver under the twenty boards, two sockets under each of the boards for its two tenons.
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And for the second side of the tabernacle, the north side, there shall be twenty boards, and there forty sockets of silver, two sockets under each of the boards.
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And for the far side of the tabernacle, westward, you shall make six boards. And you shall also make two boards for the two back corners of the tabernacle.
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They shall be coupled together at the bottom, and they shall be coupled together at the top by one ring.
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Thus it shall be for both of them, they shall be for the two corners. So there shall be eight boards with the sockets of silver, sixteen sockets, two sockets under each of the boards.
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And you shall make bars of acacia wood, five for the boards on one side of the tabernacle, five bars for the boards on the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the side of the tabernacle for the far side westward.
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The middle bar shall pass through the midst of the boards from end to end. You shall overlay the boards with gold, make there rings of gold as holders for the bars, and overlay the bars with gold.
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And you shall raise up the tabernacle according to its pattern which you were shown on the mountain.
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You shall make a veil woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and fine woven linen.
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It shall be woven with an artistic design of cherubim. You shall hang it upon the four pillars of acacia wood overlaid with gold.
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Their hooks shall be gold upon four sockets of silver. And you shall hang the veil from the clasps.
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Then you shall bring the Ark of the Testimony in there behind the veil.
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The veil shall be a divider for you between the holy place and the most holy. You shall put the mercy seat upon the
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Ark of the Testimony and the most holy. You shall set the table outside the veil and the lampstand across the table on the side of the tabernacle toward the south.
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And you shall put the table on the north side. You shall make a screen for the door of the tabernacle woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and the fine woven linen made by a weaver.
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And you shall make for the screen five pillars of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Their hooks shall be gold, and you shall cast five sockets of bronze for them.
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This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we are grateful that we can read your word and that we can study your word and we can live your word.
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We're thankful that we get to see the glimpse of your tabernacle, your dwelling place, the structure that you have designed yourself and have given to Moses.
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Father, we pray that as we read this text that we would appreciate your presence that you are a
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God who wants to dwell among his people, not a God far off but a
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God who is so close by. We pray that you would move our hearts to desire and delight in you even more.
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In Jesus' name, amen. So today's text continues from the whole series on how
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God dwells among his people. For the last two weeks, we focused on the furnishing we would find inside the tabernacle, which is really odd because when you are building up a building, normal people start with the outside structures.
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But for God's building in which he will dwell, he starts with the furnishing in which he will manifest himself so that his people may experience his presence.
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The reason why I say the word manifest rather than just plain dwell, in one sense he is dwelling, but I say he's manifesting because our
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God is a God who is omnipresent, a God whose presence is everywhere.
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There's nowhere you can go to escape God's presence. Anywhere you choose to go, you will be found by God.
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So I say manifest because his presence is everywhere and God can't be contained in some certain location.
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He's not contained like a bottle of water. His presence is everywhere.
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This concept is extremely important, especially in the ancient times, because they believed that their gods were localized.
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As in, well, there's God in this jurisdiction for this country, but that God has no jurisdiction over this country, right?
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That's why when they built up temples, they thought that their gods would actually dwell there and only there.
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And if you move out to another country, you would have to start worshipping that God, right?
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And this is important because that is not how the true God works.
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The true God is the God over all creation, not just one specific part.
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However, God in his grace manifests himself to his people in his own way, right?
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It's not that God wasn't present until the tabernacle was built, but that God was presenting a way for his people to experience the manifestation of God's glory, right?
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And this is a thread you're going to find ever since Genesis 1.
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God's present, he creates the whole world, and in Genesis 2, he creates a garden, and in that garden, the
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Garden of Eden, he resides with his people, Adam and Eve. And that presence was
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God's grace. His glory dwelt among them, but because they sinned, they were kicked out.
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And that separation, that distance between God's people and God was what the
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Israelites missed out on until now. Until now,
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God actually manifested himself. His glory was shown on Mount Sinai.
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The problem is Mount Sinai is not movable. Mountains usually do not move with a group of people.
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So God graciously gives them a plan. You're going to get a portable
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Mount Sinai, and that's the tabernacle. God's glory will be manifested inside the tabernacle.
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And today, we get to see how God's glory manifested, the invisible
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God manifested himself visibly to his people through his glory.
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So the main point of this text is, how will God's glory be manifested among his people?
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How will God's glory be manifested among his people? This question is really important today, as this nation is becoming more paganized.
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Back when some of you were growing up, most people knew what tabernacle meant.
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Most people knew how the characteristic of God, the omnipresence of God, that God's presence is everywhere.
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Not so in this culture. In this culture, people consider the presence of God to be either far off, that he doesn't really care about what you do in your ordinary life, right?
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That's deism. Or they get into the Eastern religion, where they think that the presence of God is inside the creation, right?
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There's some deity in you. There's some deity in you, right? That's the belief in a lot of Eastern religions.
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And in Japanese Shintoism, there's deity in the rocks. There's deity in the trees, right?
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They get wrong how God's glory manifests, right?
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They get wrong because they don't understand how God presents himself to his people, but not only that, to his creation.
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So the first point is that God's glory is covered. The first 14 verses of this chapter deal with the covering.
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And I have pictures again for us to see, because it is hard to imagine what they might have looked like.
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So moving from the furniture inside the tabernacle, we see the blueprint for the tabernacle itself, the tent.
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Tabernacle is just a word for the tent in which God would present himself, right?
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The first six verses outline the innermost ornamental covering, and the most precious covering for the tabernacle, in fact.
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So verse one starts with the materials. Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine woven linen and blue and purple and scarlet thread.
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The artistic designs of cherubim, you shall weave them. As explained before, blue and purple coloring were difficult to produce because it required thousands of marine snails' fluid to dye one rope.
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That's a lot of snail hunting for one rope. And you'll see how massive these coverings were, these curtains.
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So hence, the blue and purple threads were actually really, really expensive, right?
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They were precious. And similar to the mercy seat, the innermost part of the tabernacle is the most precious, right?
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The innermost covering, also similar to the mercy seat, has the cherubim design.
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The cherubim are the heavenly angelic beings with traits of various creatures.
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And we're actually going to go over why this mixture of creatures is so important, but later.
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The cherubim were actually first introduced as guardian angels after Adam and Eve were kicked out from the
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Garden of Eden. They were stationed to guard so that Adam and Eve could not go back to the
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Garden of Eden and to eat of the tree of life and to live forever as sinful human beings.
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And these cherubim were tasked to prevent any human, in fact, from entering
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God's garden, to guard the Garden of Eden. And here, the cherubim design on the innermost covering of the tabernacle would symbolically show the guarding of the house of God.
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Not anyone can enter the house of God. After all, the tabernacle was not accessible to just anyone, but only to the priests.
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And the verse 2 explains the dimensions of the 10 curtains. The length of each curtain shall be 28 cubits, and the width of each curtain, 4 cubits.
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And every one of the curtains shall have the same measurements. In modern measurement, each curtain would be 42 by 6 feet.
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Even an individual piece of the curtain was massive.
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And imagine dyeing the threads for that curtain blue and purple. This is an expensive enterprise.
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And that's because God dwelling among His people was that much worth it.
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So, verses 3 to 6 explain the assembly of the individual curtain. Verse 3 states that the curtains shall be coupled together.
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They will be connected. And verses 4 to 6 explain what that means and how that will be held together.
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And you shall make the loops of blue yarn on the edge of the curtains on the selvage of one set, and likewise you shall do on the outer edge of the other curtain on the second set.
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Fifty loops you shall make in the one curtain, and the fifty loops you shall make on the edge of the curtain that is on the end of the second set.
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And the loops may be clasped to one another, and you shall make fifty clasps of gold, and couple the curtains together with the clasps so that it may be one tabernacle.
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So, what we're looking at is the innermost covering right here.
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It's kind of hard to see. There's a better picture later. But this whole diagram is the tabernacle.
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This is the entrance. And this is the innermost covering. And it is showing just for the diagram's sake because it would have been covered by the following layers of coverings.
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And you can see this blue and purplish hue which shows the magnificence and the exquisite nature of the first covering that was used as an ornamental cover for the whole tabernacle.
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God's house was supposed to look beautiful, would have been covered by the most precious materials, right?
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And it's similar to whenever you drive by the houses in the 40s, right?
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They're painted very well, right? The outside covering is magnificent, right?
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You won't see chipped paints there, right? But how much more so God's house to have that ornamental covering, right?
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Verses 7 through 13 detail the second layer of the cover that covers the inner layer.
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This is the white cover here. Of course, that would have been covered too. And that's made out of the goat's hair, right?
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You shall also make curtains of goat's hair to be a tent over the tabernacle. You shall make 11 curtains.
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The length of each curtain shall be 30 cubits and the width of each curtain 4 cubits.
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And the 11 curtains shall all have the same measurements. So again, we don't operate on cubits anymore.
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So by feet, it's 45 by 6 feet each curtain and there are 11 of them. So that is huge.
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And this second layer was actually larger than the first layer because it was supposed to be a protective covering for the first layer.
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It had to cover over the first layer, right? And similar to the previous covering, these curtains are coupled together and verses 9 through 11 explain that how they have to be connected together and they have to be looped, right, and clasped.
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However, the difference here is unlike the inner covering, the clasps here are bronze, right?
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Again, we see the same pattern. When it's closer to God's presence, the material used is more precious.
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So the inner covering material is more precious than the second covering, right?
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And the purpose of the second covering is, as I've mentioned, to protect the ornamental covering of God's house, the first layer, right?
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And similar to the first covering, the second covering has to be united as one, right?
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They're not just separate pieces botched together. No, they're united as one, right?
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Despite the various individual parts, the coverings of God's dwelling place must be a complete whole, right?
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This is not just a shoddy architectural job. It was well -planned blueprint.
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And verses 12 to 13 show how the second set of curtains will completely cover the tabernacle by its remainders, right?
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Their remainders hanging on each side. And it covers the first covering, again, to protect it, right?
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The first covering was the most important. And verse 14 briefly described the final two coverings for weatherproofing.
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You shall also make a covering of ram skins dyed red for the tent and a covering of badger skin above that.
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Now, there are two skins here. The fourth covering is actually debated in terms of what material is actually used.
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My translation, NKJV, uses badger skins. However, some translations render it as dolphin skin.
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Holman Christian Standard Bible renders it as manatee skin. And the reason why there is confusion is because this word is not used very much.
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But we know it's some sort of skin. But without having an ancient Hebrew encyclopedia for the animals, it's really difficult to know what kind of animal was used, right?
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But what we do know is that it was some sort of animal whose skin would prove to be water -resistant, right?
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Imagine that tabernacle is staying outside. And the ornamental covering will be exposed to the erosions, weather, right?
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Rain, wind. And what was required was that the fourth covering, the third and fourth covering, would somehow prevent the water from seeping inside, right?
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We would not want the intricately, exquisitely interwoven tabernacle to go moldy.
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Or worse, that mold would develop inside the tabernacle.
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That would be unholy. That would be unclean, right? Now, the idea of God's glorious presence being covered is not new at all, right?
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Just as I mentioned earlier, the Garden of Eden was guarded by the cherubim.
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And when the Lord appeared on Mount Sinai, He was covered by thick, dark clouds.
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And that's because God's presence,
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A, would have killed anyone who saw Him. Without the darkness covering
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Him, His sheer holiness and light would have proven fatal for even the holiest people living on earth.
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Even Moses would have died seeing God face to face. And from the
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Mount Sinai to the tabernacle, we see the covering of God's glorious presence again, right?
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You couldn't see the Ark of the Covenant from the outside.
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In fact, most people didn't get to see that. Only the high priest saw that. And when they were moving the
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Ark of the Covenant, they would wrap the Ark in the coverings so no one else could see that.
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It was that important. And from the tabernacle to the temple, it remains the same.
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God's glory filled Solomon's temple, and people could not approach it.
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And the Lord's presence remained covered in a designated area.
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And yet again, when Judah rebelled against God and the Lord's presence left the temple, right, it was utterly destroyed until Ezra builds up the temple the second time.
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But nowhere do we actually see the glory of God returning. In fact, when the older Israelites come see the second temple, they weep.
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Not because it's so beautiful, but because it's not as glorious as the first one.
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It's not like the one that's destroyed. The next time we see the glory of God inside a covering is found in the
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New Testament. And it's actually not a building but a person.
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And I will read from a Messianic Jewish translation because it really does a direct translation of what the
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Word says. It captures the theme of tabernacle well. John 1, 14,
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Tree of Life version. And the Word of God and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.
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We looked upon His glory and the glory of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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When Jesus came, the glory of God did not return to a portable tent nor a stone building.
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When Jesus God incarnate came, He tabernacled among His people as a human being.
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And this is why His people could behold God's glory full of grace and truth and not die.
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In Christ, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. In Christ, anyone could approach the glory of God.
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And this is why when one of His disciples, Philip and John, says, just show us the
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Father. And Jesus says, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. You're missing the point.
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The glory of God dwelt among you. And of course,
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Christ, after the death and resurrection, He ascended, right? His physical presence is no longer with us.
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However, God's glorious presence has not left the earth. The corporate body of Christ now serves as the new dwelling place of God through Christ.
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Ephesians 2, 21 through 22. In Christ, the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the
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Lord in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the
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Spirit. This is a magnificent truth that was nowhere close in the
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Old Testament. In the Old Testament, the presence of God was limited to one single man from one tribe, from a one specific family.
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And he could only enter the presence of God once a year. And that was the
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Holy of the Holies. But in Christ, for those of you who believe that Christ has died for your sin and is risen, the presence of God dwells among you.
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Whenever we gather in Christ's name, we experience the very presence of God.
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You get to enter into the temple of God that's made out of the believers of Christ.
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That kind of honor was never experienced in history until Christ. And it is sad to see the culture that has forsaken that.
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The culture that views the gathering of the church as a mere country club.
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A culture, even in the church, that sees the gathering of people, gathering of the believers as an optional thing.
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Oh, I can just zoom in. I can just watch it later. Now, I'm not saying there won't be exceptions.
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There are exceptions when there's sickness, injuries, that you can't be present in person.
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But for those of us who can, may
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God have mercy on us when we view the gathering of His people as trivial.
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How can we look toward the gathering of God's people in which
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God's glory dwells? Just as something as common as going to work, going to visit a friend's house.
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And this is really important because that emphasis is lost in the culture today.
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The church is not the same as work. The church is not the same as someone else's house.
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The gathering of God's people is what and how we experience
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God's very presence. And we can't forsake that. We can't lose its value.
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And may we repent if we do, if we see the gathering of God's people as anything less than the manifestation of God's glorious presence.
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Second, God's glory dwells in a firm foundation. From the coverings of the tabernacle, we move on to its frames and foundations, the skeletons of the body, right?
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And for the tabernacle, you shall make the boards of acacia wood standing upright.
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Ten cubits shall be its length of a board and the cubit and a half shall be its width of each board.
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The measurement of the board, one board, is 15 feet by 2 feet and 3 inches.
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So this would have been one board right there. It's pretty tall, right?
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We're looking at God's portable palace. And verse 17 describes how each board would be connected.
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Two tenons shall be in each board for binding one to another. Thus you shall make for all the boards of the tabernacle.
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For those of you who are not into carpentry, carpentry tenons are joint -like fixtures that's carved into the wood so that two pieces would fit together, right?
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And I had to look that up too because I'm not into carpentry, right? And verses 18 to 23 show how many boards cover each side of the tabernacle, right?
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So verse 20 tells us the south side would be, it's the long side, would be covered by 20 boards.
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That's a lot, right? And they would have a silver socket as the foundation.
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It's kind of hard to see because the tabernacle's so big, but the foundation, the silver socket would be the foundation that's underneath the board right here.
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It's silver. It's made out of silver metal, which is really precious, right?
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And the same amount would be used for the north side, right? The tabernacle is a rectangle, right?
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They're parallel. So north and south, it would have the same number of boards and the same material used.
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They're all symmetrical, right? Same silver foundation too.
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Of course, the north side isn't shown, so we could see the inside of it, right? And again, we see the four layers of the coverings that we went over just prior.
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Verses 18 to 23 show how many boards would cover.
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And then lastly, 22 through 23 show the west side. The west side is the back end, right?
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The west side is considered the holy side because it is right next to the
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Ark of the Covenant, right? So for the far side of the tabernacle westward, you shall make six boards, and you shall also make two boards of the two back corners of the tabernacle.
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So here are the six boards here, and when we go here, the west side, here are the two boards for the back corners, right, to keep the tabernacle firm.
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Verses 24 to 25 show how they will all be held together. 24 says they shall be coupled together at the bottom, and they shall be coupled together at the top.
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So they're not just coupled together at one part, but both top and bottom.
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And thus it shall be for both of them, and they shall be for the two corners.
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So there shall be eight boards with their sockets of silver, 16 sockets, two sockets under each of the boards.
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Again, talking about the foundation, we can't really see the foundation here because we're mainly looking from the outside.
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And then the 26 to 29 detail the crossbars that would firmly hold the boards in place.
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It's not enough that they're connected together, but there are crossbars going across them, right? These are the crossbars.
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And you shall make the bars of acacia wood, five for the boards on one side of the tabernacle, five bars for the boards on the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the side of the tabernacle for the far side, westward.
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The middle bar shall pass through the midst of the boards from end to end. You shall overlay the boards with gold and make the rings of gold as holders for the bars and overlay the bars with gold.
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Now, the crossbars, we don't really get to find out about their dimensions.
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We don't even get to find out how they are specifically placed either.
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So this is just an estimation of how the crossbars would have been held together.
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How long it would have been, we don't know. But it covered from end to end. That's the important part, right?
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It was a firm foundation. It was firmly standing. And, of course, the overlay of the bars were gold.
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It was precious, right? It was a magnificent structure. And the reason why we're not told everything is because what
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Moses gives us is just a summary, right? It's not really for us to rebuild the tabernacle, right?
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That time has been passed. But verse 30 tells us what this tabernacle, how
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Moses would have seen this intricate design of the tabernacle, right?
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And you shall raise up the tabernacle according to its pattern which you were shown on the mountain.
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Right? Moses had to actually see it.
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God had to show it to him because it was pretty complex. So if you feel still lost how each part will go where, that's understandable, right?
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Moses had to see it himself. And because Moses saw it, he was able to tell the builders how it ought to be built, right?
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Now, despite the absence of frames and foundations of the original tabernacle, right?
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The original tabernacle is not standing anymore. The New Testament authors take the concept of the old tabernacle to use it metaphorically to describe the firm foundation of the church, right?
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In the New Testament, we actually realize that the physical things of the
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Old Testament, the physical phenomena were the teaching tools for the spiritual truth, right?
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So Paul actually takes this in Ephesians 2, 19 through 20.
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Consequently, you're no longer foreigners and strangers but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
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Again, the foundation language is what we saw here, right? The silver foundation of the tabernacle.
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And of course, the temple had the foundation too. But the main point is God's dwelling place would be firmly established.
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And for the New Testament people, the church, God's dwelling place is firmly founded on the apostles and the prophets.
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The prophets, of course, of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament. And with Jesus Christ being the most integral part, the chief cornerstone, without which the building would all fall apart.
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And just as the tabernacle was firmly founded on the strong acacia wooden frames and secured by the crossbars, the church of Jesus is firmly founded and secured, securely built upon the apostles and the prophets who are in Christ.
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And this ought to be comforting to us. Because if the tabernacle was so secure and so firm, how much more so the church?
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And we live in a nation that is becoming more and more hostile to Christianity, right?
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And its values are often ignored, if not outright mocked.
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And from media to academia, all the powerful groups of this nation stand opposed to Christ and his followers, right?
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It's popular to mock Christians. Oh, but don't touch other religions.
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That's bigoted. But Christianity, that's free for all. And you hear ministries going liberal, right?
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Woke seminaries going broke. Famous pastors utterly failing in purity and orthodoxy.
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And it seems like how can the church stand? How can the church last?
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However, brothers and sisters, we have no reason to fear that the church will ever topple.
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Because it is founded on something more precious than silver.
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It is built with frames firmer than wood. It is secured by crossbars stronger than golden -overlaid acacia wood.
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The church is built on the apostles and the prophets, the chosen men of God, with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone.
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No matter how much the world persecutes the church, no matter how much
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Satan tries to deceive the church, the true remnant will be unshaken because we are built on the foundation of Christ.
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There's no firmer foundation, physical or spiritual, than Christ Jesus himself and his chosen apostles and prophets.
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This is why Jesus proclaimed that the church will be built on the foundation, first Peter and then the rest of the apostles.
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And he said, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. There is no evil, there is no sin that is so great that the church cannot oppose.
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There is no dictator, there is no doctrine, there is no ideology that is so deceptive that the church would be fooled.
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God will and has firmly established his people, the church, and he will see to it that they are fully delivered.
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Third, God's glory is veiled from anything unholy. Verses 31 through 37.
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After covering the external features, we move back to the inside of the tabernacle.
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You shall make a veil woven of blue, purple, and scarlet thread and fine woven linen.
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It shall be woven with an artistic design of cherubim. This design is very similar to the inner ornamental covering of the tabernacle.
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Very precious and intricate, right? As mentioned before, blue and purple threads were expensive, so hard to obtain.
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And the protective cherubim are also woven in the veil as well to remind us that they are guarding the very access point of God.
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You cannot get through the veil without seeing the cherubim guarding faithfully.
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Verses 32 to 33 detail how this exquisite veil must be hung.
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You shall hang it upon the four pillars of acacia wood overlaid with gold. Their hooks shall be gold upon four sockets of silver, and you shall hang the veil from the clasps as we...
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So here, if we go here, we can see a better picture of the inner veil.
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This veil has clasps of gold, and then the wooden frames on which the curtain would hang is also overlaid with gold.
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Again, the closer you get to the Ark of the Covenant, the most precious material is used.
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And as we move inside, we see how important this veil is, right? It is hung on pillars overlaid with gold.
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The hooks are gold. The sockets are silver. And the question is, why is this veil so important?
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The second part of verse 33 to 34 actually answer that.
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Then you shall bring the Ark of the Testimony in there behind the veil. The veil shall be a divider for you between the holy place and the most holy.
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That's because the Ark of the Testimony on which God would present himself, on which
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God would encounter his people once a year on the Day of the Atonement, would be there.
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And that veil was a protective barrier from the most holy to the holy.
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That cube, this cubic area, is called the most holy place or the holy of holies.
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And it represented the most obvious and clear place, location, in which
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God would manifest himself, right? It was that cubic area.
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That's where God would be. And in order to get to that, you had to go through that veil that would cover and veil the very presence of God.
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And of course, this concept of God's cubic location gets picked up in Revelation.
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New Heaven and New Earth is a massive cube, huge, in which not just the high priest but every one of God's people will dwell.
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And what does that cube represent? The full presence of God. Everyone will experience the full presence of God, not just the high priest who enters through the veil once a year.
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In verse 35, go over the curtain, the veil that stands outside the tabernacle, which is also important because that's the holy place too.
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The whole tabernacle is the holy, right? It's just that this happens to be the most holy.
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You shall set the table outside the veil and the lampstand across from the table on the side of the tabernacle toward the south, and you shall put the table on the north side.
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And furthermore, verses 36 to 37 create even more boundary, right?
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You shall make a screen for the door of the tabernacle. And it is of the same design, blue, purple, and scarlet.
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The main difference is there's no cherubim. Now, the fact that God is utterly separated from unholy creatures is not new.
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This has been the case since Genesis 3. Unholy beings cannot stand before the holy
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God. And this is because of sin. Whenever we sin against God, whenever we rebel against the
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Lord, we distance ourselves from Him. We're farther and farther apart.
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He remains utterly unapproachable to sinners because He is that much pure and holy.
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And in the Old Testament, that was physically shown by the fact that only one man out of the whole nation, out of all the nations in the world, could enter the very presence of God in the most holy place.
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And he himself had to make sacrifice for his own sin. He was not good enough even on his own righteousness.
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And the question is, what hope does anyone have in standing before the
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Lord then? As far as I know, no one from this church is a
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Levite. No one from this church is in the line of Aaron, right?
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No one from this church has chosen to serve as a high priest, right? Pastors don't replace high priests.
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Jesus replaces the high priest. And what this high priest, Jesus, does is
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He takes what makes all of His people unclean and gross, which is sin.
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He takes our sin. And what does He do? He becomes the sacrifice
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Himself, the atoning sacrifice, so that the sin would be atoned for, covered.
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Our sin would not be held against us anymore because Jesus Himself would take it.
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And He bore the wrath of God that we deserved on the cross. Now what happens when the sin's taken care of?
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Well, His people are separated. His people can be made holy.
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His people can actually approach the Lord. And we actually see this spiritual reality through a physical phenomenon in the text that Brendan read to us this morning,
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Matthew 27, 51. At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
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The curtain that we're talking about is the inner curtain that separated the most holy place from the rest.
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Jesus, the true temple of God, by precisely staying on the cross, was destroyed for our sins so that He may make the presence of God accessible, that He may allow the sinful people to be forgiven so that they may encounter the holy
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God. Since the temple curtain has been torn in two, the whole reality, the whole trajectory of history has changed.
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It was the most important event in the history of the world.
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Sin that separated God from humans was dealt with, and the veil that covered
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God's presence was torn in two because of Jesus' sacrifice for our sin.
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Everyone who believes in Jesus has access to God. Anyone who trusts in Jesus has full access to the
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Lord. And this is why false religions actually try to keep that away from the
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Lord, keep that away from the people. They make all these hierarchies, and they make all these secret rituals in which if you don't know it, if you're not in the circle, you don't really have full access to God.
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And that is a damnable doctrine, to view that there are hierarchies among believers and to view that there are secrets that are not known to normal believers, right?
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There is a disturbing video of the Mormon temple ritual that a person went in with a secret camera, and what's in front of it is a white curtain, and behind it a voice comes out that's precisely going backwards in history to reconstruct the veil to prevent people from encountering
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God. That's what we call a false religion. Any religion that inhibits a normal believer from approaching
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God by his or her faith. For Christians, we live in a reality in which that veil has been torn, and it's no longer there.
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You can individually approach God the Father through your faith in Christ.
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Let us pray. Father, we are thankful that we live in the reality that Jesus accomplished for us on the cross so that our sin would be done away with at such a high cost so that we may live holy lives in Christ, that we may approach you at any time, anywhere, without anyone's help, we can just go to you.
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And Father, we pray that we would live in such a freedom that we would not try to build back up such an ugly veil that separates