The Tabernacle Pt. 2 Symbolism Explained

Alright, so this is the symbolism behind the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, and last week we went through the

Tabernacle in each one of its pieces, so what I want to do is just as a matter of review to just go through it quickly once again.

So the Tabernacle in the Wilderness was instituted after the Israelites were delivered from Egypt.

So as God brought them out of Egypt and they crossed the Red Sea, they were now in the desert on the way to the

Promised Land. So God told them to set up this tabernacle so that he could meet with them in their presence and they would learn how to make atonement for their sins based on God's law.

They still hadn't at that point received God's law, so this is all new to them, so this whole tabernacle ends up being very symbolic for what's going to happen in the future.

This was also instituted after they received the law, the Ten Commandments, so they knew that God had a law once they received it, now with the tabernacle they're going to learn what the ramifications of breaking

God's law is. It taught the Israelites how to approach

God. Again, God is a holy God, because we're sinners and we're lawbreakers, we've broken

God's law, we can't come to him on our terms, we have to come to God on his terms.

And that means following a precise pattern that God lays out for them.

Next, this was a God's idea. This was requested by God in Exodus chapter 25, so he's the one behind all this.

This wasn't the Israelites' plan to come into God's presence, this was

God showing them how they could come into his presence. Now this usually is typified when we talk about religion, we talk about man's religion, how man tries to work his way towards God or do these certain steps to get closer to God.

This was not invented in the mind of the Israelites. This was invented, so to speak, by God, this was instituted by him so that he could dwell in their presence, and they could dwell in his, but they would have to dwell in his presence properly.

Improperly, they would be snuffed out by God's wrath. So the account of the tabernacle begins in Exodus 25, as Moses receives instruction from God during his 40 days on Mount Sinai.

It's important to note that God gave Moses two important things on the mountain. It wasn't just the Ten Commandments.

He received the Ten Commandments and the detailed instructions for the building of the tabernacle. Again, this would be how man could atone for his sins once they broke

God's law. So not only was God giving them the law, he was giving them a means by which they could still be in his presence and be lawbreakers at the same time.

That should start ringing some bells for us. Now, the tabernacle was movable. It was called the

Tent of Meeting, and God commanded Moses to build it. God wanted to dwell among his people.

That was his goal. He wanted to have fellowship with them and be able to communicate with them.

The fact that it was portable meant that where God moved, the priests could disassemble the tabernacle, follow

God, and reassemble it so that they could follow God throughout the desert during, unfortunately, those 40 years.

Okay, the purpose of the tabernacle. This is, again, a little bit of review. First, it was to give the

Israelites a much -needed physical symbol of God's presence in their midst. The natural tendency of the

Israelites, even after all that God had done for them, was to turn away from God. Again, that's symptomatic not just of Israel, but of mankind in general.

In Numbers 17, 7, and 8, the tabernacle is twice called the Tabernacle of Witness. Thus, the tabernacle was to be a physical witness of the presence of God among his people.

Again, as the Lord said in Exodus 28 and 8, that I may dwell among them.

It was to be a sanctuary, a place set apart for God to dwell among his people. We're going to learn what that word sanctuary means, too.

Second, the tabernacle was to represent a divine means through which sinful humanity could approach a holy

God. It was to reveal how the broken relationship with God caused by sin could be restored.

Again, this was very important because if a sinful person came into the presence of an all -holy

God, God's wrath would break out on that sinner because of their sin. So, the tabernacle is an act of love on God's part for his people's protection.

He was showing them how to properly come into his presence, because that's what he wanted, and to do it without dying.

Third, the tabernacle was a foreshadow of the one in whom all the symbolism and sacrifices would be fulfilled, and that we will get to next week.

I'm just going to go through the spiritual significance of each piece of the tabernacle to see how we can understand it from a

New Covenant or a New Testament perspective. Also, the very fact that God set up the tabernacle for his people is an act of covenant.

In other words, he's covenanting with them. He's giving them laws to live by and laws to rules, a pattern, so that they can come into his presence after they've sinned because he is their

God and they will be his people. This is all based on a covenant. That's how God deals with mankind.

He deals with mankind through a series of covenants. Okay, the tabernacle stood as a visual reminder to Israel that they served the true and living

God. It helped keep Israel from idol worship that was practiced by those living around them as they made their pilgrimage in the wilderness.

Although the tabernacle made God accessible to the Israelites, he was only approachable in holiness.

Again, you have to remember, Israelites have just been delivered out of bondage in slavery to the

Egyptians. They just saw God inflict 10 plagues on Pharaoh and the rest of the

Egyptians. Then in a final act, he crushes the Egyptian soldiers and Pharaoh in the

Red Sea. So God proved himself to the Israelites through the series of plagues, miraculous plagues, and delivering them into the tabernacle.

This is going to be a difficult area now for the Israelites because they don't see

God's manifestation. So the tabernacle is a visual reminder to them that God is with them, that God is holy, and that God will lead them through the desert.

Okay, so do you remember what the tabernacle looks like? We're going to go through a little tutorial again.

So this is basically what the tabernacle in the wilderness would look like.

So first, we have the courtyard curtain, which is this long white fence basically around the whole tabernacle or tent of meeting.

So this was a protective barrier to keep people out because if they came into God's presence the wrong way, obviously, because God is holy,

His wrath would be poured out on them. So see this? This is the gate over here. There's only one way in.

Once you got into the gate, this piece in here, all in here except for this part, this is called the outer court.

So once you got inside the gate, okay, the courtyard curtain, this in here would be considered the outer court.

Next, once you came in through this gate, you would come with your sacrifice.

There's a little bull. And the first thing you would do is bring it to the priest. He would sacrifice the animal here, okay, put on the tables.

These were kind of like butcher tables. And then he would bring you to what's called the bronze altar.

They call it the brazen altar here, brazen altar, bronze altar, same thing. And here's where the priest would put the sacrifice on top of the bronze altar for God, the way

God described. Next, once the offering was made on the bronze altar, depending on what type of sacrifice it was, if it was a peace offering or a sin offering, the priest would then have instructions to go bring it inside this tent of meeting.

However, before he went into the tent of meeting, he had to hit the bronze laver. This is where the priest would wash his hands, his feet, his face to get the blood that was shed in the sacrifice of the animal and the cutting up of the animal before he walked into that tent.

Next, this whole thing here is called the tent of meeting. This is where God would manifest himself and meet with the priest.

The first thing that the priest would see upon going through this gate, okay, so we have a big gate here.

We have a smaller gate here. Once the priest went in, the first thing he would see on the left -hand side,

I don't know if you can see this too well, it's called the golden lampstand. This was a lamp made out of pure gold.

The priest's job was to fill it with oil and make sure that the lights, the candles on top of that lampstand were lit all the time.

On the right -hand side, you really can't see it over here, it was called the table of showbread. Again, the priest's job was to make sure that there was 12 loaves of bread on the table of showbread and that's what he would eat.

They would eat in the presence of God during that week. Next was the altar of incense.

So you have the lamp, the table of showbread, straight ahead, this little box here is called the altar of incense.

And again, God told the Israelite priests that they had to burn incense on that altar and that it had to be continual, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

That incense could not stop. Right behind this altar of incense, okay, would be this veil.

Now the veil, Josephus, who was a Roman historian, said that the veil was at least four inches thick and horses on both sides couldn't tear it apart themselves.

This curtain was thick. Some of the research I went through said that the

Israelites needed 300 priests in order to hang that curtain. That's how heavy it was.

So this was the curtain that stopped you from going into the holy of holies.

This piece here, this whole tabernacle is made up of two pieces. Between this gate and this veil is called the holy place.

Behind this veil is called the holy of holies or the most holy place. This is where God would dwell with the high priest once a year.

And he would have to go through this veil. This is called the most holy place. In the most holy place, there was something called the

Ark of the Covenant. And that housed the Ten Commandments, the manna from heaven, and Aaron's budded staff.

And we'll go through those this week. And then the mercy seat. The mercy seat sat on top of the ark.

It was two cherubim facing each other with their faces facedown because they wouldn't look at God because you look at God and you would die.

And this, on this mercy seat, is basically God's throne.

This is where he would sit and he would meet with the high priest. All right, so now let's get into some of the symbolism.

Now, the symbolism of the tabernacle is going to point us back to the Garden of Eden. There's going to be a lot of garden imagery as we go through this.

So when studying the tabernacle and the temple in the Old Testament, it's hard to miss the allusions to the Garden of Eden.

There are numerous references and callbacks to the garden and to mankind's relationship with God in that garden.

One argument for this association is because the garden can be viewed as the first temple on earth, which it actually was.

Eden served functionally as a prototype temple, as well as a pattern for all future temples and the tabernacle in the

Bible. So when God created the heavens and the earth and beneath the earth, the earth part is

God's tabernacle. The heavens is where God was. The Garden of Eden was the holy place and beneath that was the waters, which would represent the bronze, the brazen labor or bronze labor.

As we learned already, the purpose of the temple is to be a meeting place between God and mankind.

And it's a scene in the Genesis account where God walked with and spoke with Adam. We also know that Adam and Eve did not obey

God and were expelled out of the garden. And we hear this in Genesis. Therefore, the

Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man.

So this wasn't Adam just walking out. God drove him out. And at the east of the

Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

More garden imagery. There were temples. Temples also served as locations of partitioned holiness with inner and outer courts, gardens and holy places that required special permission and purification ceremonies to enter.

In the wilderness tabernacle, there was the courtyard, the holy place and the most holy place. Specific regulations limited who was allowed in each area.

In Eden, we can see a similar threefold division. We had the world, Eden and the

Garden of Eden. The garden was compatible to the tabernacle's most holy place and was where God's presence dwelled.

It was also where the man and woman were placed to serve. And again, after the fall of mankind is banned from the garden, he was cast out through the east gate.

In Genesis 2 and 8, the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there he put the man whom he formed.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Therefore, the Lord God sent him out from the

Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. A temple in the ancient

Near East. That's what A -N -E stands for. If you're ever reading some kind of textbook or historical book, ancient

Near East is always abbreviated A -N -E. So a temple in the ancient Near East was where a king would place his image bearer, typically an idol of stone, wood or metal, on the seventh and last day of the temple celebration.

In the Genesis account, we see that God's image bearer is not a statue of stone or wood, but a man and woman made from dust.

They're created in God's image and placed in the garden on the seventh day. Now, when we go through the creation account, the first three days,

God creates three different spaces. He creates the heavens, the earth and beneath the earth. On the next three days,

God fills each one of those spaces. So it's basically God creating a temple and then he's filling the temple with the things that he wants.

He has the birds of the air. He has the animals on land.

He has the fish in the water. On the seventh day, when kings in the ancient

Near East built the temple, it was a seven -day celebration. So on the seventh day, the king would take an image of himself, stone image, bronze image, and place it in the temple.

But here we see God placing his image in the temple, but his image is not one of stone or wood or bronze or metal.

His image is humanity. So God celebrates the construction of the temple on the sixth day,

I should say, and places man in the garden. This is wrong.

They're created in God's image and placed in the garden on the seventh day. That's a mistake. So mankind is in the garden to work it and keep it.

Now this is very important. This is similar wording used to describe the job of the priests in the tabernacle.

They're called to keep and to guard the tabernacle. So that's why we say the

Garden of Eden was the first temple and Adam was the first priest, because priests are called to guard the temple.

Adam is called to guard, work it, and keep it. After the fall, guardian cherubim or angels are placed at the entrance to keep mankind away from the garden and from the tree of life.

In the tabernacle, there's a dividing curtain between the two rooms. On that curtain are several cherubim, serving as a warning and protector for the most holy place.

Inside the most holy place in the tabernacle is a lampstand. The lampstand, made of gold and consists of branches and blossoms, is likely referring to the tree of life, which mankind has access to in the garden.

It also has other symbolic meaning, which we're going to get into. So the priests were called to keep and guard the tabernacle the same way

Adam was called to keep and guard the garden. In fact, he was called to keep and guard the garden and guard his wife, and he failed in all respects.

The narrative describing the construction of the tabernacle is also interesting because it comes in seven segments, just like the seven days of creation.

And in the sixth segment, Exodus 31 .1 describes the Spirit of God filling men to create and craft the objects for the tabernacle.

And the seventh segment, Exodus 31 .12, reminds the nation of keeping the

Sabbath. These two segments both correspond perfectly with the six and seven days of creation.

And if you remember, on day one, God speaks the heavens and earth into existence, and the

Spirit of God is hovering over the waters. So that shows us that it's God's Spirit that created the heavens and the earth.

Well, in Exodus 31 .1, there's a man called Bezalel that God fills with his

Spirit to create and build the tabernacle. So God's Spirit is doing it again, yet he's engaging man, and he's having man build the tabernacle with him.

This is a big step because the original creation, it was God alone. Now it is

God in mankind called to continue to build the tabernacle.

God instructed Moses how to build a tabernacle in the wilderness so it could serve the purpose of a meeting place between mankind and God.

With these plans are many illusions and callbacks to the first temple, as we're seeing. When viewing the tabernacle, priests and worshippers, they are to be reminded of the hallowed meeting place and how the sins of the fall ruined it.

But they are also reminded of the mercy of God, who in the construction of this tabernacle, is now allowing mankind a new access point to God.

He is a covenant -keeping God. So God places Adam and Eve in the garden.

They fall. What does God do? He doesn't wait for Adam and Eve to come look for him.

God goes and searches for them. And when he finds Adam, he says, Adam, where are you?

Not because God didn't know where Adam was, but because Adam no longer knew where Adam was.

He did not realize, well, he knew he was running away from God, but God wanted him to realize and acknowledge that he was running away, not running towards him.

So God set out, as God does. He seeks and saves his people. So now let's get into the pieces of the tabernacle.

Again, this is just going to be a review real quick. Before you could get into the courtyard, again, this is the fence, the courtyard or curtain around the whole tabernacle of the wilderness.

Before you can get into the courtyard, you would enter a large and secure fence and then have to pass through the gate on the east side.

The court fence was made of a long piece of linen. It was white, held up by posts that surrounded the tabernacle.

Only the priests from the tribe or family of Levi were allowed to touch the tabernacle.

So the fence protected people from coming too close accidentally. Everyone had to come to God on his terms.

God says the pattern or risk losing your life. The tabernacle complex, which was always located at the center of the camp, as this is

God's design from the beginning, to dwell in the midst of his people, right? We see that as New Testament believers.

God wants to dwell in our midst. God was always at the center of their lives physically, right?

They had the reminder of the tabernacle, another aspect of the pattern of the kingdom of God. God, the

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit must be at the center of all activity related to kingdom life in the new covenant.

Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, is the focal point of our fellowship with God and each other.

In fact, in John chapter one, it says, Jesus became flesh and literally tabernacled among us or dwelled among us.

So Jesus is God's tabernacle, come down from heaven to dwell with us. Now, this week, we're gonna go over the spiritual symbolism of the tabernacle, which is what we're doing now.

Next week, we're gonna talk more about Jesus and how he fulfills what the tabernacle actually pointed to.

The fence is linen, one material, and pure white representing purity and holiness.

The curtain is connected by silver bars and hooks on top. The pillars and bases are made of bronze.

The silver and white represent the sky, the bronze, the earth, and the gold within the tabernacle represents the heavens.

Ultimately, the tabernacle reflects the true and eternal tabernacle of the heavens above, the earth below, and the waters underneath.

So the silver bars and the white cloth basically symbolizes the sky, silver stars at night, white clouds during the day.

The bases are made of bronze. They're earthy looking, right? The silver and the white represent the sky, the bronze, the earth, and the gold within the tabernacle represents the heavens.

It was pure gold. In fact, in Revelation, it talks about the streets being paved, so to speak, with gold.

This is where God dwelled. The tabernacle was composed of various elements, but the unity of all in design, function, and purpose was emphasized.

Exodus 36 says, And he made fifty clasps of gold and joined the curtains to one another with clasps so the tabernacle was a unit.

And he made fifty clasps of bronze to join the tent together that it might be a unit. The structural integrity of the tabernacle was contingent on all of the pieces working together.

This is very important. The curtain around the whole tabernacle was basically bound together by the silver and the gold.

Each piece had to play a part in keeping it together, and it was a very strong, sturdy fence to keep people out.

So that basically mirrors the church. We who are many form one body.

The hand can't say to the foot, I don't need you. So each one of these clasps, the bronze ones, the gold ones, the silver ones, the bronze bases, were all working together to picture or foreshadow the church.

The whole temple was a single work of architecture, a unified unit with freestanding columns, statuary, great huge stones, beautiful timbers brought from afar, a completely unified work of art to the praise of God.

Not only was there unity in architecture and structure, but there was also a unity in the function of the tabernacle.

The purpose of the tabernacle was to provide a place where God may dwell in the midst of his people and all of the furnishings facilitate ministries and ceremonies which contribute to this one place providing a tent of meeting.

Romans 12 tells us, By the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought, but to think with sober -minded judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members of one another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

So this, the outer court to the tabernacle, with all its pieces being constantly referred to God as one unit is a picture of the church.

Each of us have different gifts according to the grace given to us. No one should think more highly of himself than he ought.

In other words, the hand can't say to the foot, I don't need you. We all need each other, and we all have a purpose and a role in contributing to God's church.

Some it's acts of mercy, some it's people who lead, some contribute, some teach.

Each one of them is vital to the integrity of the church body, the same way each of those pieces are integral to the integrity of the curtain that surrounded the tent of meeting.

Since the tabernacle is the dwelling place of God, and he is pure and holy, it is surrounded by a large and secure fence to keep us out because our sins separate us from him.

If we approach God in our sinful condition, his wrath would be poured out on us. In fact, this is why Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden.

The tabernacle is where man, mankind can come to God seeking forgiveness and receive it because God wills to dwell with his people.

This is where people will encounter salvation. 1 Corinthians 3 .16, Do you not know that you are

God's temple and that the Holy Spirit and God's spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys

God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

So this is a picture of God's people being called his temple, which is also the tabernacle in the wilderness.

So this is God is illustrating for the Israelites through the construction of the tabernacle and all its various parts and pieces, bringing all those parts and pieces together, showing the structural integrity of it, and then later on in the new covenant, pointing us to the fact that we are that temple, and that is what

God is building. We are to have structural integrity in the sense that each one of us is to contribute our talents, gifts, and abilities to the building of God's temple, and none of us are better than anyone else.

We are all integral and part of it. The church is the temple of God, and Jesus will protect his bride.

This is Revelation. 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. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

This is a tremendous prophecy and a promise that God has for his people.

Not only does he refer to Jerusalem as his people, we are pictured as a bride adorned for Jesus.

He's the husband, okay? So now when Jesus, in John chapter one, we read the words, in the beginning, and where did we first hear those words?

In Genesis. So when John says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was

God, John is talking about a new beginning, the beginning of the kingdom on earth.

And how do we know that? Because the word became flesh and dwelled, or tabernacled among us.

This is a fulfillment, or what the foreshadowing of the tabernacle and the temple pointed to.

It pointed to the fact that God will himself come and dwell with his people.

And that's what Jesus did when he came. From that moment on, he began to build the kingdom of God on earth.

Now, typically we talk about, you know, Christianity is, oh, how do you get to heaven?

You know, that's what everybody wants to know. Well, how do I get to heaven? You know, I gotta be a good person. I gotta keep the law.

I gotta do these things. But the goal is not really to get to heaven. The goal is to bring heaven to earth.

And that's what Jesus teaches us in the Lord's Prayer. You know, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So our goal shouldn't be to leave this world and get to heaven.

Our goal should be to pull heaven down, act in a way of righteousness and obedience, recognizing

Jesus as King, and bring heaven to earth so that the earth looks more like heaven.

Now, because we're sin -stained people still, we don't quite get it. So we think our job is to get out of the pain and the struggle that we face in this world, especially now, so that we can get to heaven where there'll be no more mourning, crying, or pain, and the former things would pass away.

But that's really not the goal. The goal is to bring heaven to earth. Now, we have the great promise of knowing that once we do die in our physical bodies, we will be in the presence of the

Lord. It's appointed for a man once to die and then to judgment. And Paul says, it's better that I stay with you than go, but to live is

Christ and to die is gain. He knows that once he dies, he'll be in the presence of God and not have to worry about this world anymore.

So our job as the temple of God is to tabernacle with God, show other people what we're doing and bring

God's kingdom here on earth. Okay, now we're gonna go past the gate.

I'm sorry, past the curtain, which is the outer white part here. And now we're gonna talk about the gate.

That's this purple and blue and multicolored cloth that separates, that's the way into the outer court.

So just as a way of review, a person went into the gate of the court to offer sacrifices for sin or thanksgiving, and there was only one way in.

The gate was made of hanging curtains, blue, purple, scarlet, and white, four pillars of brass, sockets of bronze, also brass, and in hooks and fillets, clasts of silver on top of the pillars.

The gate through the fence, giving entry to the tabernacle, was on the east side.

Now remember the Garden of Eden? Which side was Adam and Eve cast out of?

They were cast out of the east side. So if they had to go back into Eden, they would have to walk towards the west, which would be towards God.

East is away from God. Now this gate is on the east side.

So in order, it pointed towards the east. So if you were walking out, you would be walking east.

If you were walking in, you would be walking west. So this is kind of like, not kind of like, this is exactly what

God was doing, showing them the way in because Adam and Eve were cast out towards the east.

There was only one entrance into the court. There was only one way in, not many ways.

Everyone from the high priest to the common worshiper entered and left through this single opening. Now obviously, you know where I'm going with the fact that there's only one way in.

We know Jesus is the only way. I am the way, the truth, and life no one can get to the Father except through me.

Now, it's also interesting when you look at the outer court, everything is white. But when you look at the gate, the gate was wide and it was colorful.

In other words, you couldn't miss it. You would come to this big imposing structure in the middle of the desert.

And if you walked around it, you would see this beautiful gate, right? You'd have all the white with the poles, right?

Around the whole thing. And then this beautiful colored gate in the middle.

And what does that remind us of? That's garden imagery.

That's garden imagery. Picture all these white trees that would surround the Garden of Eden. And all of a sudden there'd be this clump of trees in the middle, fruit trees, okay?

Multicolored trees that would look beautiful, would draw you into that particular area because it stood out.

It was different than all of the other trees. So again, I see this pointing back to the garden for us.

Going west symbolized moving towards God. Going east symbolizes going away from God.

The gate on the Garden of Eden was on the east side, Genesis 3 .24. Cain went away from God to the land of Nod, east of Eden.

In other words, he was walking away from the tabernacle, where God was, going east to the land of Nod.

Lot split from Abraham and he went east and landed in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now, we know that's not a good thing. In contrast, the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of God in the tabernacle was on the west end of the courtyard.

Now, I think it's the direction of all humanity from the womb to walk east.

No one walks towards God. No one seeks after God. God is the one who has to come out to seek and save us, to turn us around and bring us into his presence.

Psalm 118 says, open to me the gates of righteousness. I will go through them and praise the

Lord. This is the gate of the Lord through which the righteous shall enter. We also hear in Psalms, I forget the verse, it'll come to me, about the gates of the

Lord. Anyway, when we read about gates in the Old Testament, these are the gates that it's talking about.

Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction. And those who enter by it are many, for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few.

Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many I tell you will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door saying,

Lord, open to us, then he will answer you. I do not know where you came from. So we see into the tabernacle, that gate is much narrower than the gate into the courtyard, okay?

So the wide gate is the gate that will go east away from God.

If you go through the narrow gate, the narrow gate goes into that tent of meeting. If you look up here on the top left side, this gate is much narrower than the gate outside the fence.

Then once you get inside here, the gate into the Holy Holies is even narrower. So it just brings new meaning when we hear

Jesus say, enter by the narrow gate. He's not talking just about any gate. He's talking about coming into the presence of God.

Now we get to the brazen altar or the bronze altar. Again, it's a matter of review because God wanted to dwell with his people.

But how can a holy God dwell among sinful people? God first required the people to offer a sacrifice.

God told Adam and Eve that the result of their sin was death. However, he had mercy on humanity and provided them with a way to temporarily cover their sin.

Instead of immediately requiring their own blood or their own death, God allowed the blood of an animal to atone or take away sin, making it possible for the worshipers to enter

God's presence. Remember only the finest, the perfect animal was good enough for God.

So God was asking them for a perfect, flawless sacrifice because the animal represented an undeserving recipient of a deserved punishment.

God wanted people to trust in his provision. So he asked that the sacrifice be valuable.

You know, over and over and over in the scriptures, we see when David wanted to buy a piece of land,

I forget who it was, but they offered to give it to him for nothing. He says, no, no, no, no, I will pay full price for it.

So we recognize that when we sin, there is a price that needs to be paid and we can't shortchange that price.

We have to make sure that there was a true sacrifice enough to pay for our sins.

The brazen altar show that the people, that there was a severe penalty for sin and that it would cost them something, something very costly, their best and finest animal.

It would be a true sacrifice to offer the very best of your flock. It also showed the substitutionary nature of atonement.

A substitute could be offered up in your place and for your sins. And this is what

God demonstrated for Adam and Eve when they sinned in the garden. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife, garments of skins and clothed them.

The skins came from an animal, which means that the animal had to be sacrificed and its blood shed in their place in order for God to cover them because the life was in the blood.

So we see God covering them with animal skins, but if he's covering them with animal skins, that means he had to kill it or sacrifice it first.

So there's the substitutionary animal in the place of Adam and Eve, the shedding of blood and then the covering of Adam and Eve with the animal skins.

For the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls for it is the blood that makes atonement by life and that's

Leviticus 17. The bronze altar called the altar of burnt offering in Leviticus was the most frequently used piece of furniture in the tabernacle.

The ministering priests went into the holy place, the outer room, twice a day, morning and evening, but the bronze altar was used all day long as people came to offer their sacrifices.

In fact, the Hebrew word for altar, Mizbach, literally means slaughter place.

This is interesting. The bronze altar also represented mankind and the earth.

From the dust you came and to the dust you will return. In fact, we see some New Testament references to this.

The soil of your heart, one plants, one waters, God gives the increase, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

There's all this earthly and agricultural terms. So what is it we do today?

In the Old Testament tabernacle, the bronze altar stood in the courtyard of the tabernacle. This is where the animals were sacrificed to cover the sins of the

Israelite people. However, now in the New Testament, Romans 12 one tells us,

I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship all day long.

Now we know that Jesus is the lamb of God slain before the foundation of the earth.

He's the one who takes away our sins. But in order for us to come to God continually, we have to come sacrificially.

We have to recognize that there was a great cost and a great price paid for the atonement for our sins.

So we don't come to God arrogantly. We don't come to him glibly. We come to him sacrificially.

And he wants us to live sacrificial lives, sacrificing ourselves if you're married, sacrificing yourself for your wife or your husband, sacrificing yourself for your kids, sacrificing yourself for your neighbor.

This is what love does. Love sacrifices itself for the betterment of the other person.

Next is the bronze laver. All right, the rest of the steps in the pattern of God coming, in God's pattern to come to him that were performed by the priests on behalf of the people.

After making the sacrifice, the priest washed himself at the brass laver. This washing purified the priest and prepared him to enter the tabernacle.

The Lord said that the priest must wash so that he would not die. Very important we remember that. The brazen laver was made from brass mirrors donated by the women.

It may have had a shiny mirrored surface which would help the priest wash thoroughly and remind him that the

Lord sees past the outward appearance and straight to the heart. Now, the bronze laver was positioned between the altar and the tent of meeting.

The laver remained filled with water. It was necessary for the priest to cleanse themselves in this basin before meeting with God.

Again, lest they die. In the same way, after we offer ourselves as sacrifices to God, we cleanse ourselves in the waters of baptism.

Our old life is buried with Jesus and raised with Jesus to a new life. Jesus answered, truly, truly,

I say to you, unless one is born of water and, or the word is even, born of water, even the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Our earthly baptism follows the baptism of the spirit done by God and allows us access to God through the veil.

So once we recognize that Jesus is our sacrifice, he was the one sacrificed on that altar in our place.

We now come to God, again, sacrificially, but when we come to God, we come being washed by God's spirit, born, washed, cleaned of God's Holy Spirit, which is water.

So our spiritual baptism follows, I'm sorry, our earthly baptism, our being baptized in a tank or in water, follows the spiritual baptism that God does in our heart so that we can now come into God's presence.

And remember, he's the one who came and got brought us to him.

We didn't bring ourselves to God because there is none who seek after God. We have all gone astray.

Each one has turned to his own way. Luke 14 says, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.

The calling of a Christian is a very high and serious calling and not to be taken lightly.

This is the last stop before you enter the holy place and meet with God. You do not wanna come in until you have been cleansed.

Again, this is why we make stern warnings before somebody takes a part in the

Lord's Supper. We wanna make sure that they are Christians and that they come sacrificially.

We wanna make sure that the person doesn't have any unforgiven sin or unconfessed sin,

I should say. So we have to make sure as we pass through the sacrifice, we pass through the waters.

Now on our way into God, we have to come with clean hearts. In Revelation, John tells us to him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom of priests to his

God and father to him be glory and dominion forever. Remember, it's only a priest that can walk into that tabernacle into the

Holy of Holies. The use of the labor was given to Moses. Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from it.

Whenever they enter the 10th of meeting, they shall wash with water so that they will not die. Also, when they approach the altar to minister by presenting an offering made to the

Lord by fire, they shall wash their hands and feet so that they will not die. This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants, which are only the priests for generations to come.

Peter tells us, but you, meaning the church, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

This mercy that we receive enables us to come into God's presence because God brings us into his family and we are now a chosen race, a royal priesthood.

We can now enter into God's presence because of what Jesus, our great high priest, has done.

Okay, we got that. The bronze labor was made from the polished mirrors that the Israelite women received from the

Egyptians. It's quite possible that the priest washed his hands and body from the blood of all the sacrifices that he would see the reflection in his washing.

He would see the reflection of his face through the blood -stained waters. Likewise, we as God's priests, kingdom of priests, must always see our lives through the shed blood of Christ by his grace and mercy.

What a great calling indeed it is to be a Christian in that we too become a kingdom of priests.

Hebrews 10, 22 teaches the same truth when it states, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

And Titus 3, 5 tells us, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

Holy Spirit. So here we see the Spirit's work in washing us and renewing us.

That's what enables us to walk past that next, through that next gate, past the next curtain into God's presence, all right?

And we do so with full assurance of faith because our hearts are sprinkled and our bodies -

That one, he said there's not works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. How does he get -

Oh, I can hear you, Bob. Oh, good, good. Sorry about that. That's okay, that's okay.

I got to figure out how to mute your thing here. Well, it doesn't matter. We're on the phone.

Oh, okay, it's okay. The bronze laver was a shadow of the word of God. Kingdom residents washed themselves in the blood of God's living word,

Jesus. They remain clean by washing themselves daily by being instructed by the written word of God that testifies of Jesus.

God's word, like the bronze laver, allows us to see our reflection and our need to be continually washed and made clean.

Without being cleaned, we cannot be in the presence of God. And thankfully, God's Holy Spirit does clean us.

But in order to come to God, we do have to confess our sins. We say it every week in church.

We confess our sins before that verse in 1 John. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

Next, this is the Tent of Meeting. And this is the place where the priest entered the tabernacle through the curtains at the entrance.

Okay, so this would be the priest. This is the curtain. This is the holy place with the lampstand and the table of showbread, the altar of incense.

Then this is the big thick curtain. And behind here was the Holy of Holies. So once we've entered through the gate, offered ourselves as living sacrifices and been cleansed, it's now time to enter the holy place and worship.

Once we enter through that gate, we can draw near to God on a regular basis. This will be where we can meet with God like Adam did in the garden and Abraham and Moses did.

Every day, all day long, offerings and sacrifices were on the bronze altar. Throughout the day, the priest would maintain their cleanliness at the bronze laver, preparing themselves for the presence of God.

We approach God in much the same way. The priesthood and the tabernacle are our tutors for worship.

The tabernacle was divided into two sections, the holy place and the most holy place. It's in this place that God will meet with his people.

Now the tabernacle was covered by several layers of multicolored skins. The multicolored skins resemble a rainbow.

The rainbow was a sign of the covenant with Noah, where God promised to never destroy the world again with water.

It will also be a reminder to God's people that they will never be destroyed by him. In fact, it also resembles

Joseph's multicolored coat. We need to be covered by this coat or robe or tent in order to meet with God.

Now in the New Testament, we need to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We put on his righteousness when we come into God's presence, because we can't come in our own righteousness.

If we came in our own righteousness, that would be sin stained and God's wrath would be poured out upon us.

So we come in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Messiah who had perfect righteousness, because you cannot approach

God apart from perfect righteousness. So here we see the multicolored skins that cover the tent of meeting.

We see the rainbow where God promised to never destroy the world again with water.

And then we see Joseph's multicolored robe representing Jesus's righteousness so that we can be in God's presence.

Passing the laver and continuing westward, we enter the tabernacle itself. The boards used in the outer walls being 15 feet long and two feet wide, furnishes a massive structure.

Each board rested on and was fixed in the foundation of a socket of silver. The boards represent sinners saved by grace.

Ephesians 2 .19 and 22 states, you're no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ himself as the chief cornerstone.

In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which

God lives by his spirit. So the whole tabernacle in the wilderness and the tent of meeting point to the church as the people of God and the tabernacle that God now dwells in.

The Holy Spirit resides in each and every believer and builds us up to be that tabernacle.

The tabernacle was a building, was a shadow of the body of Christ, the church and the true dwelling place of God.

If you're covered with the purity of Jesus through the cross, you're a part of the body structure, a board standing side by side with other

Christian followers. As part of the church, we individually and collectively are the true temple, the eternal dwelling place of God, the new

Jerusalem and the Israel of the Bible. I hope you can see the spiritual significance of the tent of meeting in the wilderness.

Next on the left -hand side was the golden lampstand, provided light in an otherwise dark room and the priest trimmed the wicks to keep them burning.

The lampstand was made from a single piece of gold. It wasn't put together in pieces.

It had a central shaft with six branches, three on each side, making it a seven -branch lampstand.

Each branch had knobs, flowers and an almond -shaped bowl to hold pure olive oil. Again, the knobs, flowers and almond -shaped bowl are all garden imagery.

This should look like a flowering plant in the garden. Outside in the courtyard, there was a light.

It was the light of the sun, moon and stars or the fiery pillar by night. However, inside the holy place, the lampstand was the only light provided.

It was lit from the perpetual fire of the brazen altar, a fire that was provided by God.

The light or the fire of the lampstand was kept burning continuously by the oil provided by the people.

Outside in the world is the fluctuating light. In the church, the light of the gospel must shine.

It kept burning by the Holy Spirit. The golden lampstand was a shadow of the light of Christ and the church shining in a dark world.

Just as the golden lampstand illuminated the holy place, Jesus and his followers bring illumination to the world.

They do so with the bright light of God's spirit dwelling within them. And you know, there's several verses that we're gonna get to real quick in a minute.

Jesus is seen as the base or foundation, the mainstay of the church. Upon this rock,

I will build my church. The other branches of the lampstand, each coming from the main shaft, were shadows of churches or individual

Christians who exist because of the fountain and main shaft. Jesus is the main light of the church and we add our glory to it or our illumination, so to speak.

We glorify God. It's not our glory per se, but just the reflection of God in us to the world brings

God glory. A similar image is found in the book of Revelation where Jesus, the son of man, is seen in the midst of seven lampstands that are revealed to be the seven churches of Revelation.

The character of those seven churches with Jesus in the center is typical of the whole church. Together, we are the light of the world.

The lampstand was made of pure beaten gold. The gold is symbolic of the purity that the church possesses in Christ Jesus.

The fact that it was beaten gold symbolizes the adversity and the suffering, the shaping and forming through which the church comes, which gives it long enduring illumination and strength.

The church of every age, but especially the apostolic church, has gone through trials and tribulations that though wearisome, leave the church brighter and stronger.

Now, obviously we're in a period right now of a little bit of adversity and a little bit of suffering, but we have to remember in no way does it compare to what the early

Christians have gone through. And we're going through this suffering for our own good. God sometimes,

God disciplines those he loves. And when the church has been disobedient for as long as it has, God has to spank us.

So we really need to look introspectively. We need to ask God for personal repentance, that we would repent of our sins as a person, as a couple, then as a family, then as a church.

And then we can start calling the people outside the church to repentance. But it's very difficult to point at the log in your brother's eye, point to the speck in your brother's eye when you have a log in your own eye.

The church needs to purify itself once again and start being obedient to God's word and look like his bride should.

Jesus says, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket.

But on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.

This is the witness of the church and every believer. The actions of our lives and the words of testimony we share are the light of the world.

It should bring light wherever there is darkness. And that's what we're called to do. We're called to bring light into dark places.

So as the world sometimes looks like it's getting darker, our job is to share the light and cast out the darkness.

Next is the table of showbread. This is where the priest placed the 12 loaves made from fine flour representing the 12 tribes of Israel.

They were a continual reminder of the everlasting promises between God and his children and a memorial of God's provision of food.

The bread, also known as the bread of presence, right? We symbolize God's presence. Again, was eaten only by the priests, by Aaron and his sons, and was replaced every week on the

Sabbath. Now, remember, as priests, we come into the house of God.

We're the only ones who can eat the bread. And we're gonna find out next week who that bread is and you know who that is already.

But it's only the priests who can eat that meal. And it was replaced every week on the

Sabbath. So this is something maybe when we talk about communion and churches wanting to do it once a month, once every other week or every week,

I would point to this verse and say, the bread was replaced every week on the Sabbath. The table of showbread was a shadow of the heavenly bread of life,

Jesus. In his teaching, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate manna in the desert, yet they died.

But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

Partaking of him, we receive life, strength, and the ability to persevere and much more.

Without Jesus, the true bread, we have no true life. We partake of Jesus as we eat the written word, the scriptures, we ingest them, we take them in.

That reveals the bread of life to us. The entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, comprise the redemption story of humanity in which

Jesus is the central and focal character. To read the written account of scriptural texts is to partake of Jesus and the life he brings to us.

Continual consumption, understanding and application of God's written word is essential for spiritual life and growth.

God speaks to us through the scriptures. The scriptures edify and build us up. He who finds the scriptures finds life and it brings healing to his body, the proverb says.

Again, this table of showbread, the metaphor that is used here is eat of this bread, did not teach the necessity of literally eating the flesh of Jesus to acquire eternal life.

Jesus simply taught that as food becomes part of an individual as it is consumed, so all who believe in him as the one who gives life are completely assimilating him.

They're bringing him into themselves. Jesus illustrated this point by comparing it with his relationship with the father as he and the father dwell together in oneness, so will true believers be indwelt by him.

So they said to him, then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven.

For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

So as you can see, each one of these pieces of the tabernacle in the wilderness has major spiritual significance to us as New Testament believers or New Covenant believers.

Again, this is all covenantal language. You can only eat the bread as a priest.

Priests had a special covenant with God to intercede for other people on their behalf.

You would only be able to partake of the bread and the wine if you were one of his people.

Next is the altar of incense. Again, for review, the high priest burned the incense on the altar every morning and evening.

The four corners of the altar had a horn and a crown, a molding around the edge. And once a year on the day of atonement, the horns of the altar were sprinkled with the blood of the sin offering.

The Lord required that special incense be burned constantly on the altar of incense. It was a special sweet incense, a mixture of spices to be used only for the tabernacle.

They were told specifically not to reproduce that or use that particular mixture anywhere else, but on the altar of incense.

God specifically required that recipe and none other was to be burned on that altar. Like the other pieces of furniture, the golden altars construction and ministry foreshadowed the kingdom living under the

New Covenant. The acacia wood that was covered by gold represented the imperfection of humanity.

Acacia wood is very stubborn, difficult wood to work with, as are most human beings, right?

Ask my wife, I'm difficult to work with. So the acacia wood represented the imperfection of humanity covered by the gold of God's divinity or perfection.

Our wholeness is only made possible by the unmerited grace of a loving God who covers our sinfulness and makes us beautiful.

The sweet aroma that emanated from the golden altar foreshadowed the sweet aroma of the saints of Jesus.

For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.

We are to bring a different scent to the world, a pleasing odor to God and to the saved and to the unsaved.

So you see the spiritual significance of that special incense. It was a special mixture only for the altar of incense and it was supposed to be different than any other of the incense mixtures, which again represents us.

We are different than the world. Why? Not because of anything we've done or because of our smarts or our good works.

We're only good because of the beauty and the goodness of God in covering our sins in his son.

Again, covenantal language. Incense burning also foreshadowed the prayers and the intercession of the saints.

During John's vision in the book of Revelation, the saints are seen around the throne of God in heaven.

Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are what?

The prayers of the saints. In the same vision, John saw another angel who had a golden censer came and stood at the altar.

He was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne.

The smoke of the incense together with the prayers of the saints went up before God from the angel's hand. What was done only by the priesthood at the golden altar in the earthly tabernacle, the shadow, can now be accomplished by any of us, any of God's saints at the golden altar in the heavenly places, the true tabernacle.

Our prayers drift upward as incense to the throne of God. I think when we see the tabernacle and we see the process by which we're brought into the holy place and then we stand before the altar, the priest stands before the altar of incense and that's the last place before we pass through that curtain and meet with God.

It will make us think differently when we pray. Picture yourself standing in front of that altar of incense, offering up prayers to God, knowing that he's right behind that curtain, listening to those prayers.

Better yet, we're gonna learn that the curtain was torn apart from top to bottom.

So there's nothing separating us. So our prayers aren't behind the curtain, they're to God directly.

It should fuel our prayer life and give us more encouragement and incentive to pray.

Placing the altar before the veil was of great significance. The golden altar stood next to the veil in the center of the holy place, which separated it from the holy of holies, where God manifested his presence.

Thus, the closest the priest could come to God in daily worship was when they ministered at the altar of incense.

The same principle holds true for us as Christians. The closest we can come to God is through prayer.

There is a significant difference between the way we come to God and the way the Aaronic priest came to him. Today, there is no veil separating us from the throne of God as there was in the tabernacle.

Before the priest could offer the incense of prayer, three requirements had to be made. First, the priest had to minister at the brazen altar.

Shedding the blood of an animal. Before we are able to come before a holy God in prayer, we must be cleansed by the shed blood of Jesus, which is done by appropriating his sacrificial death on the cross to us on our behalf.

Second, the priest had to wash all defilement from their hands and feet before they could enter the holy place to offer the ministry of prayer.

We must confess our sins and come before God with clean hearts before he will hear our prayers.

Unconfessed sin in the lives of believers hampers God from listening and responding to their prayers.

As believer priests, we are to be set apart unto holiness. So you see, we're going through that process.

We come to the altar of sacrifice, the brazen altar. Then we wash ourselves in the brazen laver.

And then we come to him. Thirdly, the priest had to be in the holy place to offer the incense of prayer.

Cleansed by blood and water, we stepped into the sanctuary to fellowship with God. It is only when we are in a proper relationship with God and we can have full assurance that he will answer our prayers.

Prayers of unbelievers are not heard by God. Okay, they're actually considered an abomination and we can go through that another time.

The writer of Hebrews sums it up this way when he says, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Okay, now we're getting a little closer. Here's the veil, right? Remember, the veil was a divider.

I guess I screwed up. A divider between the holy place and the most holy place, excuse me, where the covenant, where the

Ark of the Covenant was kept. It was the barrier between God and man and only the high priest could enter that into that most holy place.

And as you can see, if you look at the purple and blue veil, there are two cherubim that are on that veil and those represent the two angels that God put at the

East gate, guarding the garden, okay? They were guarding the temple. So those are woven into the fabric of that veil showing that if we come into God, we try to come into God's presence improperly, we will be assaulted by those angels and not get to where we wanna go.

Now, although beautiful to the eye, the veiled entrances of the tabernacle were not to be objects of admiration.

Rather, they perform two basic functions. First, the word veil in Hebrew, it's paraketh means to separate and describes its ministry.

The veil acted as a barrier between God and man, shutting God in and keeping man out.

And the curtains permitted access to worship after the priest had met the required conditions set forth in the

Mosaic law or the pattern as God says. The images of the cherubim embroidered into the curtain and the gazing on the movements of the ministering priest made him aware of the holiness of his office.

It would also remind him of the two cherubim that God set at the entrance to the garden of Eden to guard it. The awesome figures of the cherubim woven into the veil were images of angelic beings of the highest order.

Their character, beauty and power surpass human description. Symbols of cherubim were used by other

Semitic people appearing in the likeness of winged lions and bulls to guard their temples and palaces.

It's amazing that even the ancient Near Eastern temples in some way copied the true tabernacle or the tabernacle that God set up in the garden of Eden.

The veil of the tabernacle in the wilderness was actually a shadow of the corresponding veil in the temple at Jerusalem.

The tabernacle veil, like other items of the tabernacle was temporary. The temple veil was more permanent but was a shadow of the ministry of Jesus by which we have access to the presence of God.

Consider what happened to the veil of the temple at the instant Jesus bowed his head and died on the cross.

All right, we're gonna be celebrating Good Friday soon which typically is when the church celebrates the crucifixion of Jesus.

So as Jesus dies on the cross, Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice.

He gave up his spirit. At that moment, the curtain or the veil that was in the temple which was prefigured by the tabernacle was torn in two from top to bottom.

Knowing what we've already discussed about the thickness of the temple veil, it seems impossible for the veil to be split completely in two by human hands.

Only by divine intervention could this massive veil be torn as it was top to bottom. Now, it's significant that it was top to bottom.

It's not bottom to top as if man were on the bottom trying to rip the veil and come into God's presence.

God ripped the veil from top to bottom showing not that we were coming into his presence but he was coming into our presence.

Again, Jesus is the word made flesh. He came to dwell to tabernacle among us.

The veil was a graphic picture of the Lord's life and ministry as the veil and the tabernacle hid the glory of God.

So the divine glory of God was hidden during his earthly ministry. No one has ever seen God. The only

God who is at the father's side, he has made him known. That was Jesus. Before the rending of the veil, mankind had no direct access into God's presence but in a simplistic yet profound act,

God tore away the barrier that had separated him from sinful humanity for more than 1500 years.

Simultaneously with the death of Jesus, the veil was rent. This is precisely why

Jesus told his disciples, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.

If you really knew me, you would know my father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. The pluralistic desires of humanity, the desires to reach

God in any other way besides Jesus is impossible based on the veil and Jesus' own words.

He is the only way to God. Jesus cried out with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks were split.

The tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

Jesus began the process of resurrection, changing the existing world, renewing the world into a new creation.

Okay, now we're at the most holy place, so the Holy of Holies. So this is the last room in that tabernacle building.

It's smaller than the outer court. This is where once you pass through the veil, this is where you would be.

You would be in the presence of God and the Ark. The focus was on the Ark of the Covenant because the glory rested upon the lid of the

Ark, known as the mercy seat. The high priest entered that to sprinkle the blood of the lamb or the sacrifice on the mercy seat.

And that was only once a year. As we walk in the same way that the priest did, we must remind ourselves that we too are priests.

Again, 1 Peter 2 .9 teaches us that we're a royal priesthood. Each of us as New Testament believers can walk the way of the

Old Testament priest into the Holy of Holies because of the blood of Jesus and the veil of his flesh.

We're able to enter the holy place and the Holy of Holies with confidence. The only way we can do this is because of the

Day of Atonement being accomplished by Jesus as our Messiah. 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 true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

That should be beautiful in the ears of a Christian who can now come into God's presence because of the blood of Jesus, confidently, boldly, because of what

God has done on our behalf. Again, we don't come arrogantly. We don't come snidely or with wrong motives.

We have to come to God, draw to God with a pure heart, humble and a contrite heart,

David would tell us. Last is the Ark of the Covenant. This is the central focus of the entire tabernacle in the most holy place where God spoke to the priest above the mercy seat.

The Ark contained 10 commandments, the jar of manna and Aaron's budded staff.

The Ark of the Covenant was a shadow of the refuge we find in Jesus, who made it possible for us to dwell in God's presence.

By definition, arks keep things safe. For the Old Covenant Ark in the tent in the desert, which was the shadow, it was a piece of furniture containing the essence of faith of the

Israelites. The two tablets with the 10 commandments, the golden pot of manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, all that was spiritually important to the

Hebrew people was giving safe refuge in that ark, in the tent behind the veil, where very few people, only one a year, priests one a year could go into.

For the New Covenant, the Ark is Jesus, our refuge and our strength. All who yield their lives and their souls to him, find safety in him forevermore.

But the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle was not the only shadow in the

Old Testament of the refuge we have in Jesus. There are multiple arks that pointed to the true ark.

The first was Noah's Ark that saved eight people from the worldwide flood of God's judgment. Then there was the basket, and in Hebrew, it's literally the word ark, that Moses was put in when his mother sent him across the

Nile River. The Ark protected the people inside from perishing, and both times, in Noah's case and Moses's case, it was through water.

For the priest in the tabernacle, he too would have to go through the bronze laver. He too would have to go through water in order to get to that ark.

There is now no condemnation. Once you are in Christ Jesus, there is now no condemnation for you.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

Again, when you're in the ark, covered by the mercy seat, you are protected the same way

Noah was protected in the ark, and the same way Moses was protected in the ark as he crossed the Nile.

Finally, it's the mercy seat, also known as kippur. This is where we get the term yom kippur, right, which means day of atonement.

Kippur means atonement. Yom is the word for day. And that mercy seat was made of pure gold.

The two winged cherubs facing each other over the wings with outstretched wings were on it, and they faced downward, and it was placed upon the ark of the covenant.

Hebrews 9 tells us that it's, rather than use my own words to describe it,

I'm letting the author of Hebrews explain what the ark and the mercy seat was all about. So the author of Hebrews says, now, even the first covenant, which was the old covenant, which we're talking about, which is where the tabernacle and the wilderness comes from, had regulations for worship and man, earth, for worship and man, earthly place of holiness.

For a tent was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of presents. That was the holy place.

It is called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the most holy place, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna,

Aaron's staff and the tablets of the covenant. Above it were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat.

Of these things, we cannot now speak in detail. These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second, only the high priest goes.

He, but once a year and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.

By this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened, as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for that present age.

According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time for reformation.

Again, those sacrifices were temporary. They had to be repeated over and over and over because they were not forever.

But when Christ appeared as the high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a defiled person with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more would the blood of Jesus, the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living

God. Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since the death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

So we see Christ becoming the mediator, going in with his blood, perfect blood, sinless blood, to purify our conscience.

And this is once for all. We no longer need to offer sacrifices continually at the altar.

The symbolism behind the veil, behind the tabernacle in the middle of this, you might ask, well, why does it really matter?

Several reasons. The theological implications are actually so massive, we can't go into all of them, and we just scratched the surface, really.

However, there are just a few that have important implications. First, creation. Why did

God create the world? Well, he created it to inhabit it and dwell with his people. Again, the first six days of creation formed for us a tabernacle, a tabernacle that God created.

The first three days were creating spaces. The second three days, he was filling those spaces.

Ultimately, he wanted his people to dwell in the tabernacle, and he wanted to dwell with them. Next was anthropology, which is the study of man.

If the garden is the temple, then Adam is a priest. And that has implications for our idea of human purpose and our relation to the rest of creation.

So sometimes you're asked that question, what is the meaning of life? Well, the meaning of life for us is to glorify

God and enjoy him forever. We are to be his priests that minister to him on a regular basis and worship him.

He created us to worship him. That's why we still go to church on Sunday, even though there's this

COVID virus going on. Worship is essential. We're not saying that we should put ourselves in harm's way, but I would rather die in worship than die in Walmart.

Next has implications for Israel and the covenant. God sets apart a people of tabernacle and temple makers who take up Adam's original commission.

The church is that people and must fulfill their obligation. Again, God gave Eve to Adam as a suitable helpmate.

That was his bride. We are the bride of Christ. We are given to Christ as a love offering, and we too are suitable helpmates.

It is our job to help him guard and keep the garden. Ultimately, he's the one who builds the kingdom, but he gives us his spirit to become co -laborers with him to fulfill the great commission.

Next, Christology or the study of Christ. When we start to realize that Christ is the greater tabernacle, fulfilling all that the temple was supposed to be, as well as the true

Adam, it starts to fill in the picture on the aim of Jesus's work. We see that he's the one who came in as the high priest and fulfills all the roles that the high priest would, but he doesn't do them in a shadow.

He does them in reality, and he does them perfectly such that we don't have to do those things again.

Then, Ecclesiology, which is the study of the church. It follows from our thinking about human purpose and our idea of Christ's work that our theology of the church will be impacted by this idea as well.

Again, as a church, our job is to fulfill the great commission and to continue building God's tabernacle, to bring his kingdom to earth.

Most of the church, unfortunately, and in fact myself for a long time, taught the gospel as a way to get to heaven.

But the gospel is not a way to get to heaven. The gospel is proclaiming Jesus as Lord right now here on earth.

So the goal of the Christian is not to get to heaven. The goal of the Christian is to bring heaven to earth.

And that starts again with personal obedience, personal repentance, and obedience to God's command.

When we're obedient to God's command, he will bless us. People will see the blessing upon our lives and say, why are you living like that?

Why are you so blessed? You can say, well, I follow God's commandments. I'm his child. He tells me if I keep the commandments,

I'll be blessed. And finally, our eschatology, which is study of last things.

If our theology of creation is impacted, then so is our eschatology because God will fulfill his purposes at the end of all things.

Ultimately, heaven will come down to earth so that they both meet and everything will be restored the way it was back in the garden when

God created his temple, placed Adam and Eve in it. There will be a wall around that temple.

But if you read Revelation, the gates to the temple, to the garden will be open.

You might say, why? It's because all of God's enemies will have been cast out. There will be no fear of anyone coming into that kingdom who's not supposed to be there.

So that basically sums everything up. Next week, we'll take a look at Jesus and the tabernacle.

So now let me try to close this and get back to where I was.

Share my meeting window. Is that it? Okay, we're back.

Hold on. Let me get this over here. I'm gonna unmute

Jerry real quick. Where is Jerry? All right,

Jerry, any questions, feedback? Am I on? You're on. I'm on.

Just a few things. This was excellent. I mean, there's so much here. I love the whole garden imagery because, well, you and I have talked about that a lot.

As has Lawrence. The more I hear about it, the more it seems to click.

Something that I was reading in preparation, since I knew you were going to do this, regarding the garden.

There's a couple different thoughts on this, but if we read in Genesis 2 .10,

it says the Lord God planted a garden in Eden.

Yes. It's been suggested that the garden is attached to Eden, with Eden itself being the temple, since a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden.

I think that watering aspect is really important. Absolutely. The whole nourishment, right?

Coming out of the temple. So I just wanted to add that.

The other thing where you were talking about Adam being a depiction of a priest in the garden.

I totally agree with that. The idea, too, of him working and keeping the garden, right?

Because a priest, what does he do? He's supposed to maintain. He has jobs.

They have jobs within the temple. There's a lot of verses that'll back that up. It's interesting, though, when

Adam failed, right? The cherubim assumed Adam's function to guard the tree of life.

In Genesis 3 .24, it talks about the cherubim. The other thing that it's memorialized by,

I believe, the candelabra, in the candlestick in the temple, and the tree of life is obviously, you talked about that being modeled from the gold and the beaten gold and such.

But I thought that was interesting. I forget who that is from that Adam obviously failed in guarding that.

And then I think there's only one other thing that I wanted to mention. Oh, the whole east -west thing.

Spot on. The other thing, the garden,

Eden itself, was on a mountain. Yes. Because the rivers flowed down.

So the temple also is situated on a mountain as well to follow along with that whole idea.

The other thing that I found was interesting, and you may have even said this, the ark which contains the law in the

Holy of Holies echoes also the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because both lead to wisdom.

Let's see. Yeah, going back to, you just jogged my memory, with regards to Eden being on the mountain.

We remember when the Israelites, they come out of Egypt, they're in the desert, they come to Mount Sinai.

Now, when you come to the mountain, you have to climb the mountain, you have to go up, right?

Which again, we're going up towards God. And God tells Moses that the 70 elders can come halfway up the mountain, and only

Moses can go to the top. Now the top would represent the Holy of Holies. And what was on the top of that mountain fire and smoke was coming off the top of that mountain.

Moses was the high priest meeting with God. He walked down the mountain, he met with the 70 elders.

He had a meal with them. He had bread and wine with them. That's right. He told, before they went up the mountain, they told the other people, do not touch the mountain, either you or the animals.

No one touches the mountain. If you touch the mountain, you will die. Right? Again, it's the same way. When you're in the outer court, you cannot enter that gate and come into the holy place until you've made a sacrifice, been washed by the laver, cleansed, and then you can come in.

So that mountain has tremendous, tremendous significance. I'm glad that you brought it up. And the other thing you mentioned just now was the bread and wine they shared.

Communion. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. The other thing going along, again, you got me going.

So just as the temple had a tri -part structure of the concentric circles of the holy of holies, the holy place in the courtyard, so the

Garden of Eden had the same. You had Eden, the garden, and the outer world. Yes.

So again, it's minor things, but it just shows how significant and how these both tie in.

Also, the idea of rest, the climax and purpose of creation was rest.

The construction of the tabernacle accumulates with rest. Yes. And I think that's it.

Yes. I think it's important to point out, you ask most people, what's the opposite of rest?

And they say work. Yes. Work, certainly, we're not called to work on the

Sabbath, but the opposite of rest is unrest or disorder or dis -ease.

So it would be like, let's say you're moving into an apartment and you have seven days to move in.

And on the first six days, you have all these spaces and you put all these boxes and stuff in each room and you're putting the furniture away.

And on the sixth day, you put everything away so that you know where everything is.

Well, on that seventh day, you can rest because everything is in order. Everything is where it should be and you know it.

So there's this piece that comes about you, knowing that everything that God has planned and is fulfilled and that he has the perfect order set up for us.

So it doesn't mean that we don't move around on the Sabbath day. It's not like when they weren't allowed to leave their tents and stuff like that.

Again, the new covenant comes with new promises. We can assemble for worship. That's the day where we can come into God's presence corporately.

And that's why it's so important to meet together as a church and not individuals on Zoom meetings.

We have to gather together corporately, enter God's presence together.

I was going back and forth with somebody on Facebook today and they were saying, no, you can take communion and you can meet as a church online.

And I understand what they're saying. The problem is it's a slippery slope. People might get so used to that and say, well,

I don't have to go to church anymore. And then I looked up and I remembered the word church is ecclesia.

It means congregation. Yes. If the church is a congregation, that means you have to congregate.

What is congregate? We get together. We get together every week. Worship is essential.

Maybe the government doesn't think so, but as Christians, we do. Worship is essential. It's essential that we come together and worship

God. Now, I'm not saying that you should put yourself in harm's way, but we put ourselves in harm's way for so many different things.

God has to be first in our lives. And I think we see this hand of judgment upon the entire world right now is being forced to rest.

It's as if God's saying, well, you don't want to keep one day a week and you haven't done it for so long. I'm going to make you rest every day.

God has a way of getting our attention and showing us what's really important. Think about the people who are separated right now who would just love to be together.

Right? You would, we would love to be together with relatives and other people that we know. God is making us, showing us where we've taken those things for granted.

You know, where sometimes we just take it for granted. So -and -so is always going to be around. I can visit them anytime

I want. When you can't visit them is when you realize, you know, I had a gift and I wasn't using it properly.

And I recognize, I see my buddy Gene out there. Alana, I'm muting your microphone.

Hey, Gene, how are you? Good, buddy. Can you hear me? I can hear you perfect.

How you doing? I'm doing well, Anthony. Thank you so much for such a clear and thoughtful presentation.

That was really wonderful. Oh, my pleasure. Did you, did you have any questions or anything that you wanted to add?

Nothing to add. I thought you were extremely thorough. Again, I love that idea about, you know, us bringing heaven to earth.

Right. And just, you know, again, encouraged by, you know, the use of scripture and, you know, us being what we're supposed to be.

So really enjoyed everything. So thank you for that. Oh, amen. I'm so glad you tuned in.

It's a blessing to have you on here. I'm going to see, I see my buddy Jason's out there.

Let me unmute his microphone. I'm guessing that Jason's got some good things to say and offer.

What's up, buddy? Hey, and how's it going?

That was really incredible. Yeah, you like it? Okay, good. Yeah, as I took notes, you seemed to hit on every single one.

So there was, there's not much for me to add. And I know that you're going to, you're going to make the correspondence.

You're going to go deeper into how Christ is revealed in this. Yes. You know, it's just,

I guess from a, from a novice viewpoint, you see in that first chapter of John, where he tabernacles, you know, tabernacles amongst us.

And I remember studying this, the Greek word skinu is that tent, the word that they used.

And it just warms the heart. It warmed my heart a couple of years ago, seeing this, that he's tabernacling amongst us.

But then when you go through this, and I was listening to this last week with my son, my 19 year old son, who's home from college.

And he says, wow, the amount of work and detail. And to think of traveling through the wilderness with all of this detail to set up, no wonder why it took them 40 years to get, and to break that down.

I mean, I, the part, the hardest part of camping is setting up and breaking down. Wow. Yeah, yeah, true.

But, but the significance was that God is tabernacling amongst you. And we get, we get to skip so much of that work because we have

Christ. Amen. And, and it just, you know, now when you see the amount of significance to it, it just, it just really makes that sacrifice real.

And it makes it so much more significant than just a, a surface level, you know?

Sure. So, and, you know, one of the things that we, we miss because we're reading it in the scriptures.

And, you know, we have pictures and diagrams that I put up on a PowerPoint and that's all nice. But think about, you know, you and your family finding the best animal in your flock.

Now you and your family would probably recognize the best animal you probably talked about. Oh, that's the best one we got. That's the one we got to sacrifice.

So that's the one you bring to, to the front of that gate. You walk through that gate. Your whole family has to put their hands on that lamb or that bull or that goat while the priest takes a knife and slits its throat.

Now I'm sure the lamb, the bull, the goat wasn't just sitting there allowing this to happen.

It was probably bucking, crying. Blood is probably shooting out everywhere because they cut its neck and that's where the artery is.

So this was a graphic, graphic depiction of the horror of sin and what it deserves.

Yeah. And, and, you know, mankind got it wrong from the first example of sin when it came to Cain.

Cain's heart was not in the right place. He was not giving the right, you know, he was doing something wrong that led to Abel being exalted and him killing his own brother.

So from the very start, when it, when it comes to us, we get it wrong. Yeah, absolutely.

Look, in the hands of man, we're always, we're always going to be walking East. We're not going to be walking towards God.

In fact, when I did this study with Jonah, you'll, you'll notice when you read the Old Testament, keep an eye out for the term,

God sent an East wind. An East wind is always a sign of God's judgment.

Wow. Okay. So when, when the people are walking East, okay, again, that is, that is perpendicular, 180 degrees away from God.

So when he sends in that East wind, I mean, that is a sign of judgment upon people.

So I'm, I'm glad you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Praise God. All right. Let me see.

Joe Erso. Can you hear me? How you doing? Very enjoyable presentation.

Okay. And points well taken with Jerry about the East and the West was very powerful to me.

And also the, having come into Earth was a revelation to me.

I think that was very well presented too. And I do have one question as far as the

Israelites being nomads as they were, and it took 40 years to get through the desert.

How many times did they move? That's how did that go? Oh, it was, it was a lot to do with it.

I mean, yeah, it was, it was constant. It was, it was constant. They, they, but it was on a daily use basis, wasn't it?

And if it was on a deal, what do they do in the interim? Well, if, if, if the pillar of God rested upon that, that tent of meeting, they stood there and the people brought their sacrifices into the outer court.

The priests would do the sacrifice, bring it into the holy place. And then the holy of holies once a year.

And if the, the pillar of cloud moved, they would disassemble the, the, the tabernacle and move with it.

Okay. They would follow God wherever he went. Now, throughout the course of the, the, the 40 years, they were in the desert.

I don't know. I don't think the scriptures tell us how many times it moved, but it moved a lot. Now, here's two things that I want you to remember.

First of all, the priests were the only ones who could assemble and disassemble the tabernacle.

And they were the only ones who could offer sacrifices. So when you think about priests, did you ever see the movie?

The Karate Kid? I have. Okay. You know, when he, Mr. Miyagi is, is, is making him do all these, these different chores, paint the fence, sand the floor, wax the car, all these different things.

What he didn't realize is that was actually making him stronger. So think about what the priests had to do.

They were handling animals all day long. They were the ones with the knives, cutting and butchering up the meat, lifting the legs of the bulls as a wave offering.

Kind of like, you know, Mr. Miyagi. They're lifting, they're lifting the hind leg and the entrails and all this kind of stuff.

So they were like ranch hands. These, these were not girly men. These were men's men. Then at a moment's notice, if God started to move, they had to act quickly, break down that whole tabernacle and start moving it.

So, so these, these were, these were very strong men. They were the ones who were positioned directly outside the tent of meeting.

Okay. To guard it. That's, that's what their job was. Then the other tribes of Israel were camped around the priests.

So the priests basically were around the whole perimeter of the tent and around the priest were the rest of the, with the rest of the tribes of Israel.

So they were kind of like the, the, the guard before somebody got to the tent. Now think of it in a, in a, in a new, in New Testament terms, we are to guard the presence of God.

We're called to guard our hearts, right? We have to guard sin from coming into our hearts.

So we have to be very careful what we look at. We have to be very careful what we listen to.

We have to be very careful who we associate with. Why? Because that's all that could be sin coming into our lives.

And we have to recognize that as God's priest, we are to guard against those things.

Now, gratefully in our sinful state or our sin nature,

I should say, we do fail, but we have the ultimate high priest who ultimately guards us.

And I love the, the benediction from Jude. I want to read it for you because, and I really should commit it to memory.

I know it kind of, but I always butcher it up. It says, now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only

God, our savior through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever.

It's him who can keep us from falling. So once, once we've bent the knee, we bowed the knee, we trusted in Jesus as the sacrifice for our sins.

We've been washed by the Holy Spirit. We can come into God's presence. And although imperfect, we have a great high priest who has gone behind that veil into the

Holy of Holies and offered up that sacrifice to us that will cleanse us. He's obtained eternal, eternal retention, and he will not fail in saving his bride.

So we have a tremendous, tremendous, the new covenant. If you read the book of Hebrews, it's very clear, is built on better promises than the old covenant.

In the old covenant, you could lose your salvation. In the new covenant, you can't. Once God births you, you are his child forever.

There is no turning back at that point. God, if you, in fact, let me, let me read in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 36,

I believe. I'm pulling it up now. Okay.

In Ezekiel 36, starting at verse 24, I just want to read you a couple of things and listen to the amount of times

God says, I will. It's starting in verse 24. This is

God speaking. He says, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.

That's one. I will sprinkle clean water on you. And you shall be clean from all your uncleanness.

And from all your idols, I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit.

I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

You shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers. You shall be my people. I will be your God. I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses.

I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations.

Then you, that was 10, that's 12 I wills from God. Then our part, you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good.

And you will loathe yourselves for your inequities and your abominations. It is not for your sake that I will act declares the

Lord God. Let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways. Oh, house of Israel.

So it's God who is doing this. All these I wills, I wills, I wills.

These are the I wills of God. When God says, I will do something, he will. Okay.

Our job is to be obedient and recognize that it's not for our sake that he's doing it.

He's doing it because he promised to do it.

It's part of his covenant to his son. Now there's also, I think it's, he says he will put the fear of him inside our heart so that we will not turn to the right or to the left.

Again, this is a tremendous promise. He places a fear of him inside of us so that we don't turn to the right or to the left.

So this is God's grace restraining our hearts from doing the evil that it wants.

We have a new heart now, a soft heart, a pliable heart versus a heart of stone with God's laws written upon them.

Okay. And he places a fear of us in fear of him in our hearts so that we don't turn from him.

Now, if God has to place a fear of him into our hearts, what does that mean?

That means it wasn't there to begin with. Our hearts do not start off by fearing God. We fear man.

We want to impress man. We are concerned about what mankind thinks of us.

We want to be man pleasers, right? That's what the flesh wants. It wants to be like man. But God says, no,

I'm going to rescue you. I'm going to redeem you as part of my covenant. I'm going to change your heart so that you can bring heaven to earth.

Not just so that you can get to heaven. I mean, that's a blessed benefit, certainly. But our jobs when we pray the

Lord's prayer and we act in obedience is to take dominion over the world.

We are to actively bring everything in our lives unto the lordship of Jesus.

So Jesus is here and everything we do should line up underneath it. Nothing should be outside of his lordship.

Now, that's a process. I'm sure there's parts of my heart that for some reason or another,

I just have not surrendered to the Lord yet. But it's this process of sanctification.

As God brings things to mind and exposes my sin to me, which he has certainly done with this coronavirus.

I recognized there was so many things in my life and so many areas of my life that still need to be changed.

And I pray that God would grant me repentance, that I would be able to turn from those things, bring those things unto the lordship of Christ, and be obedient to his word.

So it's this ongoing process. But I point back to Ezekiel 36. I point back to Jeremiah 31, to all the

I will statements of God. And I trust when God says, I will, that he will do it.

I trust that Jesus, being the last Adam, will protect his bride.

Where the first Adam allowed Satan into the garden and allowed Satan to lie to his bride,

Jesus will not let Satan into the garden and will not let his bride be deceived. You know, there's a scripture in the

New Testament that says that the elect, even if they could be deceived, you know, if possible, it's not possible that God's elect will be deceived.

Because Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice, I give them eternal life, and they shall what?

Never perish. Once God gives you eternal life, it's eternal life.

It's not eternal life as long as you keep it up. It's not eternal life as long as you don't fall. Because you will fall, you won't always act in obedience.

You will not be able to keep up what is necessary for eternal life. What's necessary for eternal life is for that high priest to go behind the veil, sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat once and for all to rescue you from your sins.

So that's a big, big deal. And again, we just scraped the surface of what was going on.

So let's see. I think, where's Bob and Joanne? Let me see if I can unmute their microphone.

Bob, you there? Yeah, I'm here. How you doing? I'm doing good, buddy. How, you got questions?

No, I have no questions, but that was an excellent study. And I am encouraged to read

Genesis, Exodus, and Hebrews. By tomorrow.

It's a great understanding. By tomorrow, we're going to read those. You know,

I tell you what, it's been a real blessing for me. I try to read the Bible through once every year.

So this year, I read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And then I stopped and I said, you know what?

I really got to go back and reread those first five books. The first five books of the

Bible are so, so foundational in laying the groundwork for so many things that it pays to read those repeatedly.

Similarly, the Gospels. You know, if you could read the Gospels two or three times throughout the year and read the first five books of the

Bible several times, it's going to really help your understanding. It's going to show you what the purpose of Jesus coming into the world was.

Again, most people think that the goal of the Christian is to get other people to heaven.

The goal of the Gospels is to tell you the story about how God became king of the earth.

That's the point of the Gospels. The Gospels are telling you the story how God came to earth and became its king.

He's ruling and reigning right now until his enemies have made a footstool of his feet. And how are his enemies made a footstool of his feet?

By the proclamation of the Gospel. God's people will hear his voice.

They will turn to him, enter into his presence, become his children, and now work out their salvation with fear and trembling and change the earth.

The people who hear the Gospel, who don't receive it, will become

God's enemies. They're his enemies to begin with. But they will hear the Gospel. They may reject it.

And then God is going to deal with them as such. But when God's church, when his bride begins to act in obedience and do what it's supposed to do here on the earth, they are going to be blessed.

And people are going to look at the church and say, that's what I want to be like. And that's how

God will provoke them to jealousy and bring them into his kingdom. So the Gospels are the story about how

God became king here on earth. It's not how to get to heaven, okay? Now as God is king here on earth, we bow down to his rulership.

We bow down to his lordship. We act in obedience to him and we bring heaven to earth.

Now I know, is that? Um, hold on. Where did Bob go?

Bob, you still there? Yeah. Okay. Thank you for tuning in. I'm going to turn off your mic.

I'm going to go to Michelle Giordano. Hi, Michelle. Hi. We had to switch computers because the other one died.

But I don't think this one has a camera. So you can hear us? I can hear you just fine.

How you doing? Good. You can't see us? I can't see you. Okay, Emily and Ava, we're all here.

Hi, Emily. Hi, Ava. Hi. Oh, that was good. Excellent.

Do you guys have any questions? Are you being patient? Um, we wish. Well, this is so good.

I mean, I just want to listen to it again and again. We just so much to learn.

And my friend Donna, she couldn't make it tonight online. So she wanted to know if we could send her.

We could do that, right? Yeah, what I'll do is I'm going to, we're recording this right now.

So what I'll do is I'll put it up online or put it in a spot that people can watch it if they want.

And I'll send you a link to it. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Yeah, I really loved so much too about, you know, when you talked about prayer and how that's the closest we could come to him.

And I don't know, just there's so many things. We're just writing a bunch of notes. There's so many things we learn in all the time.

I bet your daughter's taking the better notes. Yeah, that's right. You know what,

Emily should put all her notes together from all the studies that we've taken and sell them as like cheat sheets.

Those cheat sheets are perfect notes. What do you say, Emily? Thank you. Tonight she's using a whiteboard and then she's going to write them in her notes.

Oh, nice. She likes to rewrite them. Okay, great. Yeah. And I like, you know, just the little tips that you say,

Anthony, I like how you say, you know, you know, read the gospels a couple times a year. The first five books of the Bible, you know, twice a year, you know, these are just things that I'm learning because I'm still working on just getting through.

I mean, I read the Bible once throughout the year. Now I'm on my second time. Good for you. Thanks. And, you know, just all the little tips that you have as well.

It's just amazing, Anthony, how you can teach this to all ages, young and like all ages, you know, how

Emily and Ava can understand it. And just, you're unbelievable. It's just such a blessing. Well, it's real easy for me because I teach at a fourth grade level.

So because that's the way I learn. I feel like I'm in fifth grade. So this is just the way

I learn and teach, you know. No, honestly, there's so much more depth to this, the whole tabernacle and the temple system.

Really, I just scratched the surface. And honestly, I was using a couple of different resources and combining them to try to come up the best of what

I could see. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to sit down with one book and go through it completely.

So I was picking and choosing, you know, here and there from different spots. So I didn't learn it as well as I'd like to.

But putting all this stuff together and then presenting, it helps me to understand it more, too. So I'm in the same boat as you guys.

None of us have arrived. None of us are, you know, scholars where we get this, you know, special knowledge imparted to us.

You know, we're all works in progress and we're all learning together. So I'm happy to do it because I learn as I put it together, too.

Thanks, Anthony. And I have one more thing. Thank you so much. I love how you shared that the goal is to bring heaven to earth.

And, you know, just like, you know, we're always trying to tell our family members and passing out tracks and, you know, sharing it on Facebook.

And you really encouraged me to do that. And but just, you know, living at home, not being able to see so many people in our own homes, you know, just bringing heaven on earth in our own homes when we can't be with other people.

That's something really great for me to think about because we do get stressed. Certainly, certainly.

We have to remember, though, you know, again, I think I said it at church. You know, we talk about social distancing.

You know, I've never heard that term before this coronavirus situation. I've never heard the term, you know, social distancing.

But Scripture says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Right. So there is no social distancing between us and God.

He lives in us. And when we open his word and we pray and we ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate his word to us, he speaks to us through the scriptures.

So we have access to God Almighty. Think about it. The God who breathed and created the heavens and the earth, the tabernacle in which we now live, we have an open door policy with.

Again, we don't come to God flippantly. We don't come to God casually.

We want to think of God when we come to him in prayer the same way when you're in a courtroom.

Right. The judge isn't in the courtroom. We're all seated. The bailiff walks in and he says, all rise.

Judge so -and -so now presiding. Everybody stands up. You honor the judge. You recognize his authority.

But the beauty part of honoring the judge and recognizing his authority is also to know that he's our father.

So we don't want to lose the intimate relationship we have with him as a father. But we also don't want to call him our homeboy either.

Right. God is holy. He's just. He's righteous.

He's different than anything we see or encounter in this world. So it's important that we approach

God correctly. The same way the priest had a pattern to approach

God with the sacrifices and ultimately atonement and worship. We want to make sure that we maintain that same honor with God.

You know, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That doesn't mean like a

Freddy Krueger horror movie kind of fear. It means that you take God seriously.

You revere and honor him. If the President of the United States, no matter who he may be, walked into your house, you would have a reverence and an honor for him because of the office that he holds.

But God is way beyond any office that any man holds here on earth.

He's the King of Kings. The Lord of Lords. He is the Most High God.

There is nothing higher than him. So we want to enjoy the fact that God sent his son into the world to die in our place.

And we've received that. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We're adopted into his family.

We are children of the living God. But we never, ever, ever want to forget that he's the

King. He's holy. He's righteous and just. Just the same way the book of Hebrews says that God is an all -consuming fire.

We have to remember that God is an all -consuming fire. The fire can warm us.

The fire can cook our food and feed us. The fire can be used as light and guide us.

The fire can be used as protection to ward off our enemies. But you do not play with fire.

It can feed you. It can protect you. Um, all those things. But you don't play with fire.

You respect fire. So although, again, God is our Father and we have that intimate relationship with him.

We don't want to, um, come casually into his presence.

We want to make sure that we're honoring him as God. So in the morning when I pray, I immediately say, uh,

I say, Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus. Not because of my righteousness or anything that I've done.

It's nothing that I've done that gains me entrance into your presence. It's only what your son

Jesus has done. And it's only because of his perfect finished work that I can come to you the way

I am without your wrath being poured out on me. Thank you. So I start off, most people end their prayers in the name of Jesus.

I begin my prayers in the name of Jesus. I don't want to come to God in Anthony's name. I want to come to God in Jesus's name.

And his name means his power, his authority, his reputation. You know, uh, when, when the book of Proverbs says, um, leave a good name for your children.

He doesn't mean the letters A -N -T -H -O -N -Y or U -V -E -N -I -O.

A good name means a good reputation. Okay. Who you are. It's your reputation that, that meet, that is, um, codified by that term name.

So we come to Jesus. We come to God in the name of his son because of what his son does.

He's the veil. Next week we'll learn he's the temple, right? We go into Christ.

We are found in Christ. We are found in that tabernacle, in that temple. We are, we become his priests.

Okay. And he was the high priest who went behind the veil into the Holy Holies. So we want to make sure that we, um, we honor

God the way he deserves to be honored. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We don't ever want to take that for granted.

Make sense? Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you so much. Good. Let me see if, um,

Eric over here has any questions. Yeah, buddy. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Oh, you got the, hey, how are you, Ethan? Good, how are you?

How are you, buddy? You can hear? Did I put you to sleep, man? I'm sorry. That's what happens when you're laying on the couch.

Did you have something to add, Eric? Um, no, thank you, of course, for preparing all that.

Yeah, I just wanted to add that we spent our time in the wilderness when we had to set up and take down all those chairs and now we're in a permanent place.

So that is true. I'm so glad that we don't have to do that anymore. You have no idea.

You know, think about if we never had to do that, we would never be as grateful as we are now for the sanctuary that we do have with all the chairs set up.

So sometimes, in fact, we read it again in Psalm 119.

Hold on. I think it was, oh, let's see, 119 .70

-something. Let me see. I know last week we read in Psalm 119 .71,

It is good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes. And then this week we read again,

I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous. And then in all faithfulness, you have afflicted me. So, you know, a lot of times the health, wealth, prosperity guys, they're talking about how

God's will is never for your harm or anything like that. And God doesn't mean to harm us in affliction, but he puts us through affliction so that we learn to appreciate and love him more.

You know, again, just in that little example with the chairs, having to break those down at least twice a week.

You know, we would do it, you know, Wednesdays, we would do it Sundays and then men's breakfast. Breaking down chairs, putting them up, taking them down.

What a pain in the neck. Now we're in a sanctuary, we don't have to do that. Trust me,

I remember that all the time. It's like, oh, thank you, Lord. We don't have to break down chairs and put them away.

So it was affliction, but it served for my benefit. Now I'm more appreciative of what God has given me.

So that's that. All right, I'm trying to see. Joe, do you have any more questions? No, no,

I just want to thank you again. I mean, I really did like all that you said.

I mean, I learned a lot. I learned a lot from that. Praise God. One question

I do have right up. Was Mount Sinai the top of the mountain that Moses went to?

Is that like the Ark of the Covenant? Is that like the Abenakal? Oh, no. No, no, you're right on.

The Mount Sinai was a tabernacle where God met with Moses and the 70 elders.

Now, the Ark wasn't on the mountain, but as Moses climbed the mountain, it's figurative of like climbing your way to heaven, so to speak, into the heavens.

The top of the mountain, the 70 elders couldn't go there. God said, stop the elders.

It was the high priest. Sorry? And Moses was the high priest. Yes. Moses was the high priest, and he was the only one allowed to go to the top.

And the high priest is the only one to go into the back room. Exactly. He was the only one who met with God.

And when he came out, when he came down the mountain, his face shone. It shined because he was in the presence of God.

So they recognized something was different about Moses. He was the one who was in God's presence.

And it was on the top of the mountain that you saw the fire and the smoke, and there was lightning and rumblings, and the people were afraid.

And they should be afraid because, again, if a sinful person were to try to come into God's presence without properly cleansing themselves and having the right sacrifice,

God's wrath would break out on them. God can't stand in the presence of sin and not do what he does with sin.

So that's why knowing Jesus and knowing what he's done is so amazing because he's the one who took

God's wrath on himself. He's absorbed all of the wrath that was due to us on himself so that now we can come to God innocent, free of that sin and clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

The same way that tabernacle had those skins over it, represented like that royal robe, same robe that Joseph wore, that multicolored robe.

That's the robe of Jesus's righteousness that we wear every day. Make sense?

It does. It does. It all comes together. Excellent. Excellent.

I'm glad to hear that. Okay. Anthony, I have a question. Me and Emily and Ava. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So when you said that God is an all -consuming fire and you gave all the ways, protection and feeding and loving stuff, is that just...

Like when you say that, is that... I mean, this might be a silly question. Is it literally a fire, like the

Holy Spirit? I don't know how to think of it. Is that just a way for us to think of God?

Yes. In fact, if you want to look it up, it's Hebrews 12, verse 28 and 29.

And it says, Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our

God is a consuming fire. You remember the burning bush that Moses encountered in the desert?

Yes. Okay. God appeared to him in a bush that was burning. It was a fire, right?

Jesus says in the New Testament, I will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Okay. So now, what does that mean? When Jesus ascended into heaven, he poured out the

Holy Spirit on the earth. That's what we see at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.

Okay. He poured the Holy Spirit out upon his people. The fire comes, the fire that Jesus will baptize us with, comes in the form of judgment.

So as God judges the world, the people who are filled with his spirit are not destroyed by that fire, but they're crafted and molded and hardened by that fire.

When you put a pot, a clay pot into the fire, it purifies, it cures it, right?

So that clay will never be bent or molded. It'll come out a finished product.

So the fire that Jesus baptizes the world with is going to destroy them.

It's going to be judgment, unless the Holy Spirit lives inside of them. Okay. So God is a fire in that sense.

He's not a literal fire, and we have to recognize that he's holy and just.

And it was just my illustration of when it says God is a consuming fire to describe

God in terms of what fire does. Fire can cook your food. Fire can warm you.

Fire can protect you. Fire can lead you. If you're in the dark, like the pillar of fire by night, the fire moved and the priest gathered up the tabernacle, broke it down and started following God.

So he led them by a pillar of fire. But again, fire is not something that you play with.

You don't stick your hand in the fire. So you have to make sure that you honor

God the way he deserves to be honored and follow him the way he prescribes. Over and over and over in the book of Exodus, he talks to Moses.

He says, tell them the pattern that I have set for you. The pattern, the pattern, the pattern is a pattern or a way that we have to come to God.

Again, the pattern always ultimately points to Jesus. He's ultimately the pattern and the reason why we can come to God.

I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the pattern. Okay. So we come to God because of Jesus.

We don't come to him in and of ourselves because again, our sin would separate us from God and he would pour out his anger on us.

Does that help? Yeah, it does. Thank you so much. But then when you referenced to the burning bush, that was, he did come in fire, but only at that time.

Right. That was a manifestation of God. And the unique thing was the bush that was in the fire wasn't consumed.

Right. The bush wasn't burnt to a crisp. The bush was there. The fire was in the bush.

It's very similar to God's people. God's people are in the fire, but they're not burned.

Think of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, right? The king, I forget the king's name,

Balthasar. I think he cast them into the fire. Um, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego weren't burned.

In fact, they looked into the fire and they saw a fourth person with them who would be

Jesus. Right. So they came out of the fire. The scripture says they didn't even smell of anything burnt.

So the fire of judgment upon this world is not going to destroy

God's people. It's going to make them better. Affliction is good for God's people because it strengthens us.

It teaches us how to value things that we sometimes take for granted. I mean, I so see, you know, the

United States, which started off as a Christian nation, taking God for granted, taking his blessings and his gifts for granted, the freedoms that we have here for granted.

Um, and now, uh, start straying away from God such that, you know, we, we kill 3 ,000 babies a day.

We dishonor God's ordinance of marriage. We dishonor God's definition of humanity as male and female.

We try to, you know, redefine it 15, 50 other different ways. We've so dishonored, we don't honor the

Sabbath. We don't take a day out to, to dedicate solely and completely to God.

You know, we're, we go to church for an hour and a half, and then everybody's busy about doing their things. Or some people don't go to church at all.

Or some people try to watch online and think that's, that's good. That's good enough. It's not, it's not.

We have to dedicate that day to God. It's the Lord's day, right? Uh, we eat the

Lord's supper. It's the Lord's, right? It's the Lord's day and it's the Lord's supper.

Uh, we have to make sure that we honor the Lord's day. It's his day. So it's important that we, uh, we do those things.

Now, as a country, we've strayed away from those things. So anything that God does to us, we know as God's people, it's for our benefit.

It's going to serve to strengthen us. It's going to serve to better us. God works all things together for good.

But for those who are not God's people, this is going to be chaos and disorder, uh, and, um, unrest.

You know, we have peace in the midst of, of what's going on because we know

Jesus and we know that this is for our good. Some people don't have peace. Now, even myself, when

I, when I was sharing the other night at, at the prayer meeting, um, you know, Anthony, I just have to interrupt.

I have to go. Okay. All right. All right, brother. Great job. God bless. Talk to you soon.

God bless. Bye. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you. So we, um, uh, you know,

I, I brought up Psalm 23. How many people know that Psalm by heart? I mean, everybody knows the

Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in Greek pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. You know, he restores my soul and everybody, just about everybody knows that I must have said the first verse of Psalm 23, four or 500 times in my life.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. The moment this stuff happened with coronavirus, right.

And we had to be sent home and, you know, we, we started to see, you know, there's a possibility of economic collapse.

My world turned upside down and I'm like, Oh my goodness. I was overcome with fear, panic.

I started stressing about certain things and it was just, God exposing my heart to myself, showing me that my heart truly didn't trust him as shepherd.

I said, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. But really it was the

Lord is my shepherd and I still want the things of the world. And you end up,

God shows you that you worship what you fear. So when your fears start being exposed to you, those are the things that God wants you to look at and say, why are you trusting in those things?

Why are you trusting in the economy? Why are you trusting in the size of your bank account? Why are you trusting in your, you know, the stock that you pick?

Why are you trusting in fill in the blank? Why are you not trusting me? I am your shepherd.

So if you find yourself wanting certain things during this time that are not of God or based on faith and trust in him, those are the things that God is bringing to the surface that you have to address.

You have to pray about those things. You have to turn from them, repent, right? Turn and cling to Jesus, knowing that all things happen, you know, for good for those who love

God. Make sense? Yes.

It's not tough to understand. It's just tough to swallow. Trust me.

You know, I'm in the midst of it, but this is a learning process for all of us.

You know, up until now, I mean, I've lived a charmed life. I've never had to truly worry about any kind of crazy things.

You know, you saw a little bit of unrest with 9 -11, but now with this, this is a whole new ballgame.

We don't know what's going to happen with the economy in a month or so. We don't know who can still get the coronavirus.

You know, there's so many unknowns, so many uncertainties. But this we do know.

We know him who's in control. We know who the shepherd is. And we know that we're protected by him in the midst of the fire.

And he does these things for our good. This is a way that he exposes some of our idols, the way he removes them from us.

And, you know, to be honest, it hurts. It hurts because you get used to certain things. You get used to certain blessings.

And like I prayed in the prayer meeting, you know, I presumed upon the grace and mercy of God. I just assumed it would always be there.

And that's not true. You know, it is true in the sense that God's never going to leave us or forsake us.