The Earthly Sanctuary – Hebrews 9:1-5

All right, let's bow in prayer before we begin. Our gracious Father, we thank You for the joy that it is and the delight that it is to be able to look into Your Word and see things so rich and so profound, to see Your redemptive plan unfold before our eyes.

And we thank You for the grace of Christ which we have sung about, and we pray that You would impress upon our hearts and our minds Your perfect purposes and Your perfect Word today. And may the grace of Christ be with us and help us to understand Your Word so that we may see Him in all that was predicted and prophesied and all that has been completed.

Be honored here today through our study and our reading and our meditation upon Your Word we ask in Christ's name, amen. We'll turn in your copy of God's Word to Hebrews chapter 9, if you're not there already, Hebrews chapter 9, not chapter 8, chapter 9.

So we're moving on.

See, it's sad that we are getting so close to the end of Hebrews, isn't it? A few more weeks, we're going to be done with this and we'll move on to something else. In light of current events, I'm kind of thinking about going through the book of Ecclesiastes.

Again, Hebrews chapter 9.

The Continuity of the New Covenant in Hebrews 9

Starting a new chapter does not mean that we're starting a new subject, so don't think in your mind, okay, we're moving on from chapter 8 to chapter 9, so therefore we must be moving on from a discussion of the old and new covenant to some other subject, because the subject matter is the same.

Remember, the chapter divisions are there for our convenience, they weren't there in the original, so there's no division of thought in the mind of the author in terms of what he is discussing. So in chapter 8 and 7, really, having shown us what Scripture promises concerning a new covenant and then having shown us that Jesus is the mediator of that new covenant and that the old covenant is obsolete and it has vanished and it has gone away, and then having shown us that the new covenant is superior to the old covenant, the author now is going to, in chapter 9 and 10, show us how all of the main features and fixtures of the old covenant have been replaced and fulfilled in what we have in Jesus Christ.

So he's continuing the same subject, but now he's sort of set the table for us, and now he's going to take all of the prominent and most recognizable features of that old covenant and then show us how those things, item by item, point by point, have been done away with in Jesus Christ, how what we have is superior in Christ, how he has accomplished it, he has fulfilled it, that's the whole point of Hebrews 9 and 10.

And at the center of the old covenant, which we've spent some time looking at in the past few weeks, at the center of the old covenant were really three things that all revolved around the worship of God by Israel.

Israel's worship, well actually the purpose of the old covenant was to establish a people who would worship Yahweh and be a light to the nations, and around that worship, as central to that worship, was three basic main recognizable central features.

Number one, a tabernacle, number two, a priesthood, and number three, animal sacrifices. A tabernacle, a priesthood, and animal sacrifices. And those three things were central to the worship of the nation of Israel.

The tabernacle was the place where the animals were sacrificed, and the blood was spilt, and atonement was made, and the priests were the ones who did all of that, and all of Israel's worship was around animal sacrifices.

Well now in chapter nine, the author goes through these three central features, the tabernacle, the priesthood, and the sacrifice, to show us that Jesus has entered into a better tabernacle, the one in heaven, he has performed a better priestly service, and he has offered a better sacrifice.

And so each of these three features have a parallel in Jesus. Each of these three items has a parallel in Christ, and Christ has fulfilled it and replaced that which was central to the old covenant. So that's the whole point of chapter nine.

And so as we start that, we're gonna see how the priest, how all three of these are mentioned, and then how Christ is sort of put over top of all of them to show that he is the fulfillment.

Of that.

And there's an easy outline for the first 10 verses, and we read the whole chapter at the beginning of our service. I'm gonna offer you an easy outline for the first 10 verses, MacArthur offers this in his commentary, and I saw other people use this very same outline, so I don't know who came up with it first, but it doesn't matter, it's a good outline.

In the first five verses, we see the sanctuary, he describes the sanctuary. In verses six and seven, the services that surrounded the sanctuary. And then verses eight through 10, the significance of the sanctuary and the services.

The sanctuary, the services, and then the significance of both. So as we read through, I'm gonna read verses one through five here, I want you to notice that there is a mention of the tabernacle and the things inside the wilderness tabernacle.

And then I want you to notice that there are two places, or two parts of the tabernacle that are mentioned, the holy place and the holy of holies. All right, let's read verses one through five. Now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary.

For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread. This is called the holy place. Behind the second veil there was a tabernacle which is called the holy of holies, having a golden altar of incense, and the ark of the covenant, covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the banner, and Aaron's rod which budded, and the tables of the covenant, and above it were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat.

But of these things we cannot now speak in detail. It sounds like he's speaking in detail, doesn't it? That's typical of preachers, by the way, to give you a whole bunch of detail and then to say, oh, I really can't give you a lot of detail, and it makes it sound like we're smarter than we actually are.

I'm not suggesting that's what the author of Hebrews does, but he says he cannot now go into detail, and I'll explain to you what that means probably next week. So I face a bunch of recklessness here is that in the mind of the author, what he is describing here is the tabernacle and not the temple.

The tabernacle and not the temple. Not Solomon's temple, not a later version of the temple. It's the tabernacle and not the temple, and we're going to get into the distinction between those two here in just a moment.

There's a difficulty that I face at this point when presenting something like this to any audience, and the difficulty is this, that for many of us, verses one through five sounded like a foreign language.

And I recognize that that is possible if you're a brand new believer or maybe if you've gone to churches that didn't talk about things like this and you never got into the Old Testament because, well, that was the Old Covenant, right?

That wasn't for us, and so we don't read that. Maybe that was the mentality for years, and then you come here and I read all of this and it sounds like this is something from a science fiction novel or something from a different world that's entirely like a different language to you.

You have no idea what the mercy seat is or the tabernacle or the holy place or the earthly sanctuary or any of that. And maybe it might be that most of what you understand or know about the Ark of the Covenant came from a Harrison Ford movie.

I understand that that's possible. In today's church, we really don't go through some of these details. Well, we're going to go through them today, and in trying to describe what it is that the author is describing here, I want to give you a foundational knowledge of what was in place under the Old Covenant so that all of us can be on the same page, and part of that foundational knowledge will be understanding the central features of the Old Covenant because if we don't understand what the Old Covenant was about and how it was structured and what went on in the worship of Israel, we're not going to be able to appreciate what it is that Jesus has done to fulfill that.

We're not going to see in our minds the parallels, the connections between the old and the new, and we want to see that so that we can appreciate what it is that Jesus has done that would have fulfilled the items and the features and the pictures under the Old Covenant.

So that's what I'm doing here this morning, and to do that, I'm going to do something that I have never done before. This is, I have a slideshow up here on the wall behind me here in just a moment. So if this is your first time here, I don't want you to think to yourself, and I know there are some first-time visitors, I don't want you to think to yourself, oh, this is one of those churches that uses the overheads during the message.

We're not. That's not what we do. We don't do this every week. Next week's a puppet show, so at least we mix it up a little bit. No, in 23 years of preaching, I've never done an overhead presentation during worship service, and I really struggled with whether or not to do that today, but I'm going to.

I've done this in Sunday school, but not as part of the worship service. So let's see if we can make this work.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

You guys want to sing again? Where are we at? I'm going backwards. Oh, that makes sense.

There we go.

Thank you.

And that concludes our presentation for this morning. All right, you'll notice that verse one, we're going to work our way through the text while I kind of do some explanation, and we'll have some pictures up here.

So you'll notice that verse one describes the tabernacle as the earthly sanctuary. I think that that is intentional in the mind of the author of Hebrews, because he is really trying to show us the temporary nature of what was established under the old covenant.

I've said before, the old covenant was not intended to be a permanent covenant. It was not intended to be eternal. Everything about it was temporary. Everything about it pointed towards something else that would fulfill it.

And so the author is trying to describe the tabernacle and all the worship of the nation of Israel and the features of the tabernacle in terms that would remind us of its temporary.

Nature.

This was the central structure of their worship, and it was a tent. You're going to see it in a moment.

It was a tent.

It was not a massive building that was intended to last forever. It was simply a tent, and there was nothing more temporary than a tent, particularly a tent that could be put up and taken down, and it moved around.

Everything about it was temporary. Everything about it was intended to say, this is not the final thing. This is not the end. It's not an end in itself. This is going to be replaced. This is going to go away.

This will rot. This will perish. This will go the way of history. Everything about it was temporary, and nothing is more temporary than a tent. And you see how, even in Hebrews, how the author describes this tabernacle back in chapter 8, verse 2, where he says, Christ is a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.

So the author distinguishes between the heavenly tabernacle, which is heaven, and the earthly tabernacle, which was intended to sort of point forward to heaven, or at least portray some realities of heaven itself.

And so there is the tabernacle that is on the earth. It is earthly. It is made by hands. It's made by humans. Nothing about it was permanent. Hebrews chapter 9, verse 11, but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands.

See all the way through this, he is distinguishing between that which is permanent and that which is real, that which is eternal, and that which is temporary and is passing away. So that's verse 1. Now verses 2 to 5, I want you to notice, he describes the earthly sanctuary here, he uses the term tabernacle to refer to two sections of it.

In verse 2, there is the outer one, in which were the lampstand, the table, and the showbread, or the sacred bread. That's called the holy place. Behind the second veil, verse 3, there was a tabernacle called the holy of holies.

So the word tabernacle could be used to describe everything within the courtyard, which you'll see here in a moment. It could be used to describe the entire tabernacle-tented structure itself, and the word tabernacle could be used to describe part of that which was called the holy place, or the other part of it which was called the holy of holies, the holiest place.

So the word tabernacle has a bit of a flexible meaning when we use it to describe that which existed in the Old Testament. The instructions for building the tabernacle, if you want to read this in your spare time, they're given in Exodus 25 through 40, and most people, when you make that commitment to read through the Bible once a year, that's about the place in Exodus where you get and you think, I'm not sure I should have signed on for this, maybe I should skip over that.

It's kind of what you might think is the boring part, if you don't understand what you're reading about all the poles and the stands and the curtains and the veils and all of the stuff that you read about there, there's all of those chapters, I think somebody, by one reckoning, in the Pentateuch, there are 50 chapters devoted to describing this place where God was to be worshipped.

Now there are two chapters given in Scripture that describe all of creation. There are 50 chapters that describe where God was to be worshipped. You think God cares about details when it comes to His worship?

He does.

It's significant. Every last bit of where and how He was to be worshipped was prescribed for the nation of Israel.

All right.

I'm heading in the right direction.

Here we go.

All right, so I'm going to show you a bunch of different mock-ups. There's no place in Israel where you can go to see the actual tabernacles, but where it is or where it went has been lost to history.

Nobody knows. So you're going to see some artist renditions of it, some replicas of it, etc., but this is basically the gist of it. You had that courted courtyard around the outside of it. The tabernacle could describe that entire courtyard, or it could describe just that tented structure that you see in the middle of it there.

And in the Book of Numbers, the children of Israel were to encamp around the tabernacle structure and to sort of protect that, and everybody could come to the central location. And even where each individual tribe was to camp was prescribed.

I don't know that they had teepees, but they had some sort of a tent, you know. Now, down in the southern part of the nation of Israel, there is a life-size replica of the tabernacle. It's in the park at Timna, and it is, yeah, the southern tip of the nation of Israel.

And this is a picture of that down there. You can see, just take a note of the terrain there around this. This is the life-size replica that exists in Israel today. That replica is, yeah, you'll get it in just a second.

I'm trying to find out. Where's my little pointer deal? Oh, here we are.

Hey.

Okay.

This is the southern part of the nation of Israel right here, and so you have to go north to get to Jerusalem and Jericho and the Sea of Galilee. But this is the Timna Park right down there. It's down in the bottom part of it.

So you can see, now, to go back, I know how to go back because I did that before. This is the Sinai Peninsula. So the children of Israel, after they came out of Egypt, crossed the Red Sea. That's this body of water here, and then wandered for 40 years in this Sinai Peninsula.

And so the geography or the landscape around Timna, where the tabernacle sits today, is very similar to the region of the area where they would have wandered for 40 years in the.

Wilderness.

Let me go back. Can I get it?

Okay.

So here's the basic layout of the tabernacle. There was an entrance, one entrance to the tabernacle in the courtyard that was on that side. That fence or that perimeter that you saw is about seven and a half feet tall, was how tall that curtain was that went around that.

And then this structure here, which is the, what we're referring to the tabernacle, the earthly sanctuary, this is the holy place back here. Let me give you some dimensions for this. The outer courtyard was 150 feet by 75 feet wide.

So to give you some idea of perspective, this room from this wall to that wall there is 75 feet across. If it weren't for these two angled walls, this room is 75 by 75. Our building that we're in is 125 feet long.

So the sanctuary, that outer courtyard would have been about the width of this, the width of this room, and another 25 feet longer than our whole building is, 25 feet is this pillar here to this wall over here.

So that's 25 feet. So add that amount onto the end of our building and that was the outer courtyard of the tabernacle. And inside of that was the, was the earthly tent or the earthly tabernacle. To put it in perspective, this is an American football field and this here is the size of the court of the tabernacle.

I don't know why they said American football field, is there any other kind of football? And I'm not going to go through all of the details of this, but you'll see that there's a brazen altar that we'll talk about here in a second and a brazen laver or laver, however you want to pronounce that.

And then there are furniture inside of the tabernacle, which is what the author of Hebrews focuses on, is the furniture that's inside the building. And you will notice that there are four layers of skins or four coats over top of the tabernacle itself.

The outer covering was a badger skin, the covering of ram skin was underneath of that dyed red. There was a coat of goat's hair and then a coat, curtain of fine linen. So there were four layers of cloth over top of that earthly tabernacle.

There's a little bit of, let me see if I can go on here. Okay, so here's another artist's rendition with sort of a cross-section of it. You can see there, that is the life-size replica that exists down in the park at Timna.

Let me give you the timeline for this. The tabernacle was built in around 1500 BC, so 15 centuries before Christ. That's when God made the covenant with Israel and Moses in the wilderness and they built the tabernacle.

It was intended or built designed to be taken down and moved, which in the book of Numbers they have all the places that they moved to and every time they would arrive they would set up the tabernacle in the children of Israel camp in their massive, by tribe, around the tabernacle and then it would be taken down again and moved to the next spot when God, when the pillar of fire and smoke would move in the wilderness.

So that tabernacle was built in 1500 BC and it was transported during all the wilderness.

Wanderings.

Eventually they came into Israel when Joshua took possession of the land and so we, oh by the way, this right here Shiloh is about 40 miles north of Jerusalem. South of this, down very far south is where the other map was at.

So Joshua, when he came into the land, it says in Joshua chapter 18 verse 1, then the whole congregation of the sons of Israel assembled themselves at Shiloh and set up the tent of meeting there and the land was subdued before them.

So when Joshua came into the land of Israel and he crossed the Jordan River over here, they set up the temple, the tabernacle at Shiloh and it stayed there for 369 years until the time of Samuel and you read about this in 1 Samuel and in 2 Samuel, you'll read about how the ark stayed there at Shiloh.

That's where Samuel ministered before the Lord at Shiloh. There is, and I won't leave that up there for very long because my wife didn't give me permission to put her picture up on the screen, but there is at Shiloh today a place where the ark stood and the tabernacle stood for three and a half centuries and you can go there today at the ancient town of Shiloh and those are some of the ruins there.

And so you can see what the landscape looks like there around ancient Shiloh. The tabernacle stayed there until the time of David. During the battles and the events of 1 Samuel and early into 2 Samuel, the ark of the covenant was taken from Shiloh and it was moved from city to city and captured by the Philistines and it kind of changed hands a couple of times.

Remember the children of Israel would take the ark of the covenant out into battle because they thought that having the ark with them would give them the power and the presence of God. So they would take the ark out from Shiloh and then bring it back.

Well at one point it was captured and then it was returned and eventually David got the ark back and during his reign he brought the ark into Jerusalem. After he had captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites, he brought the ark of God from Shiloh to Jerusalem and so you read that in, is this the passage there, 2 Samuel 6.

So David and all the house of Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouting and the sound of the trumpet. Then it happened as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David that Michael the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord and she despised him in her heart.

So they brought in the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent which David had pitched for it and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before.

The Lord.

So you can see there that the center of worship was moved from Shiloh to Jerusalem and David's time is about 1000 BC. So Moses is 1500 BC, David lived in about 1000 BC so about 500 years there, 40 in the wilderness wandering around and then 369 years at Shiloh and eventually David brought it in during his reign and it stayed in Jerusalem until Solomon built his temple just right after David.

So remember David after he died he appointed Solomon as king and Solomon took over for his father David and it was during Solomon's reign after Solomon had built his own house that he decided to build a house for God.

So that's when Solomon's temple was built in around 950 to 970 BC and that was the temple that was destroyed when the Babylonians came and conquered it. We've talked about that in recent weeks with Jeremiah and his prophecy and the promise of the new covenant.

The Babylonians came in and destroyed the temple and destroyed Jerusalem in 586 and that's when Daniel was taken away captive to Babylon. There were actually three deportations from the city of Jerusalem and from Israel into Babylon.

Most people date the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem around 586 and in one of those three deportations Daniel was taken to Babylon with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So that was destroyed in 586 BC.

Around 500 BC and other than the 586 these numbers are within a few so I'm rounding up. Around 500 BC there were three returns to the land of Israel under the kingship of Cyrus. So after Babylon fell to the Medes and the Persians, King Cyrus issued a decree that the Jews should go up and rebuild their temple.

So there were three sort of returns just as there were three deportations from Jerusalem, there were three returns back to the land of Israel. And there were three men who were instrumental in basically rebuilding the worship of Israel and the city of Jerusalem.

And those three men were Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah. Now Ezra mentions Zerubbabel and Ezra obviously, Zerubbabel went back up to rebuild the temple. Ezra went back up to reform the people. Nehemiah went back up to rebuild the wall.

So each of them had something different that they were rebuilding and all of that happened around 500 BC. Now those three men who returned from the exile in Babylon and rebuilt the nation of Israel, Zerubbabel, temple, Ezra, people and Nehemiah, the wall, those three men were accompanied by the prophetic ministry of various Old Testament minor prophets.

So Zerubbabel and Ezra's rebuilding of the people and the temple, that was assisted by the preaching and the proclamation of Haggai and Zechariah, those two Old Testament prophets. And then Malachi came alongside of Nehemiah.

He was a prophet in Jerusalem during Nehemiah's day. And where does Queen Esther fit into all of this by the way? Queen Esther takes place right at the beginning of the return back to Jerusalem. So she would have been a contemporary with Ezra and Zerubbabel and may have even known those men.

Does all of that make sense? Okay, so that's about 500. Then you have the ministry of Nehemiah takes us up to roughly around 400 and then we had 400 years in which there was no prophet in Israel, there was no revelation given and people were just waiting for the fulfillment of all of God's promises for a Messiah.

And that brings us up to 0 BC. Now to go back just a little bit, just a little bit prior to 0 BC, oh by the way, between the time of Zerubbabel and Ezra, Zerubbabel rebuilt the temple but it wasn't quite as glorious as Solomon's temple.

It was a little bit smaller, which is why I think it is Haggai who talks, or Zechariah, one of the two, one of those two prophets, he talks about the people saying, oh this isn't like its former glory.

And they kind of were a little disparaging of the new temple because it wasn't quite like what Solomon did in his day. So after that temple was rebuilt and the worship was restored, there was invasions by various forces, Greeks, etc. and they would put an end to temple worship and the temple was broken.

Down.

Eventually just prior to the birth of Jesus, Herod started to rebuild the temple and that was the temple that was being built in Jesus' day. Remember when he said, destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up.

And they said, it's taken us 46 years to build this temple and you're going to raise it up in four days or three days? That was Jesus describing the temple in which it was alive in his time, that was Herod's.

Temple.

It wasn't Solomon's temple, it was kind of a rebuilt, refashioned, remodeled version of the temple that was refashioned and rebuilt after Solomon built his and so that was Herod's.

Temple.

That was what's known as the second temple. So if you're ever reading about something and you come across the words second temple Judaism or the second temple, it's describing that temple that was in existence at the time of Jesus around 0 B .C.

0 B .C.?

No.

Zero.

Let's just call it zero. When Jesus was born. That temple, Herod's temple, was destroyed in 70 A .D., 40 years after Jesus died and rose again. That's the temple that was destroyed when Titus came in in 70 A .D. and laid siege to the city of Jerusalem and destroyed that and put an end to the temple worship and it has never been rebuilt again.

Now what you really want to do is get back to the slideshow after doing all that. So we've gone forward 1 ,500 years from the time of Moses. Let's go rewind again and go back to the time of Moses in 1 ,500 B .C. and see what everything would have looked like.

Oh, here's Solomon's temple, by the way, or at least a mock-up of Solomon's temple. One thing I forgot to mention that as much when the children of Israel replaced the tabernacle, which is the earthly tent, with Solomon's temple, the features, the fixtures were the same.

Ark, altar of incense, brazen altar, the washing pools, etc., the lamp stand, all of that stuff was the same, but the layout was a little bit different, but very similar in structure and similar in layout to what was in the tabernacle, though not identical.

All right, back to here, and I'm not sure why I put that in because I was going to move on from that. So this is inside the replica that exists down in Timna at the southern tip of Israel. This is what it would have looked like.

That's not a man, that's a mannequin. You can see that there's a rope draped across there. They obviously don't want you shaking hands with the mannequin, but on the left-hand side here you can see the candle stand, which I'm going to show you here in a second.

This is the showbread, and this is the altar of incense. Here's the second veil that's mentioned in our text here in Hebrews chapter 9, the second veil behind which is the Holy of Holies, and that's where the Ark of the Covenant was.

Here's the golden lamp stand, or at least a recreation of it. Currently in Jerusalem, next to the Temple Mount, I took this picture when I was in Jerusalem, this is the golden lamp stand, and down there at the bottom it says this is the first recreation of the golden lamp stand after it was taken by Titus in 70 AD.

This is the first one. The Temple Institute is intent on rebuilding the furniture for the temple. It's almost like the Jews have a plan to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. If you think things are exciting in our land now, wait until they either discover or rebuild the Ark of the Covenant and set their sights on the Temple Mount where there is a mosque sitting to this day.

They can't build a temple because there's a mosque in the way, but if I'm reading my Bible prophecy right, and I think I am, something has to happen to that mosque. Something's going to happen because the Jews want to rebuild the temple up there, so they've started recreating the temple furniture, and when they decide to rebuild that temple, things are going to get lit.

It's going to be fun to watch that. We're going to just be totally distracted. Our whole country can fall apart. We're not going to be paying attention to that. We're going to be watching what happened in the Middle East because that's going to be where all the action is at.

Here I'm standing in front of it to give you some idea of the size of that lampstand. Here's the table of showbread. You'll notice in verse, where we at, verse 2, it describes inside that outer sanctuary.

This is the first compartment of the tabernacle that you would walk into. There was a lampstand and the table and the sacred bread. There's three items that are listed there, though the table and the sacred bread were really considered one item.

This table was made of acacia wood, overlaid with gold. It was three feet long, two and a quarter feet high, and one and a half feet wide. Weekly, they placed 12 loaves of bread or 12 cakes of bread there, one for each of the 12 tribes of Israel, and it would stay there for a whole week.

At the end of that week, it would be replaced with fresh bread, and the priests who ministered in the tabernacle, they were allowed to eat the bread off of the table of showbread. At the back of that, you'll see back here is the altar of incense, and there you can see that those are mannequins and not people, poorly dressed mannequins at that.

The altar of incense was one and a half feet square and three feet tall. It was made of acacia wood and overlaid with gold, and you can see here what it would look like. So, I mentioned earlier that they had the brazen altar that was out at the beginning of the tabernacles.

When you walked into the tabernacle courtyard, the first thing you would see is the brazen.

Altar.

That was where they would bind the animals to that altar, they would kill the animals there, start a fire underneath of it, and it would burn the burnt offering and the blood would drip down over the coals, obviously.

They would take from the altar, the brazen altar, the coals that the animal had been sacrificed over and that had burned part of the offering, and they would bring that in and they would put the coals in the altar of incense, and they would apply the blood of the offering to the forehorns of the altar of incense.

And this, of course, would burn the incense inside of the tabernacle, and the incense would be prepared according to specifications which God gave them, and that would create a sweet aroma inside of that place.

And now to the Ark of the Covenant. This is the Ark of the Covenant, not nearly, well, this is at least the mock-up. This is not the actual Ark of the Covenant, by the way. This is a mock-up. This is the replica that's down in the park at Timna, and, of course, different people have created different mock-ups or renditions of what they thought it might have looked.

Like.

Some of them rather simple. Some of them a little bit more complex, a little bit more beautiful. And there's one that is really fancy. The Ark of the Covenant was in the Holy of Holies. It was 3 feet 9 inches long, 2 feet 3 inches wide, and 2 feet tall, and it was covered.

In gold.

The lid of the Ark, which is this part right here and upwards, this lid of the Ark is what is called the mercy seat. The mercy seat was the lid on top of the Ark of the Covenant. Between the wings of the cherubim is where God said, I will meet with you on the mercy seat, which was on top of the Ark.

Exodus 25, verse 22 says, There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim, which are upon the Ark of the Testimony, I will speak to you about all that I will give you commandment for the sons of Israel.