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.

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a new covenant and then having shown us that Jesus is the mediator of that new covenant and that the old covenant is obsolete and it has vanished and it has gone away, and then having shown us that the new covenant is superior to the old covenant, the author now is going to, in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 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, it's just 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'm going to 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 1, 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 1 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 toward something else that would fulfill it. And so the author is trying to describe the tabernacle and all of 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.

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

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 just 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 get to your, when you make that commitment to read through the

Bible once a year, it'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 this, I'm going to show you a bunch of different mock -ups, like, 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. 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 7 1⁄2 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 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 gonna 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 coating 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. Now, there's a little bit of, let me see if I can go over 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 read, 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 of 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'd 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 in 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 1 ,000

B .C. So Moses is 1 ,500 B .C., David lived in about 1 ,000 B .C., so you have 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 B .C., 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

B .C. Around 500 B .C., and other than the 586, these numbers are within a few, okay, so I'm rounding up.

Around 500 B .C., 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 B .C. 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

God's promises for a Messiah. And that brings us up to 0 B .C. Now, to go back just a little bit, just a little bit prior to 0

B .C. 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 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 the temple was rebuilt and the worship was restored, there was invasions by various forces,

Greeks, et cetera, 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 lampstand, 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 lampstand, 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 lampstand, and down there at the bottom it says this is the first recreation of the golden lampstand after it was taken by Titus in 70

A .D. 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 a 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 are 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. And 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, and 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, and 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.

So it was on top of that Mercy Seat, over the Ark of the Covenant, between the wings of the cherubim, that's where God said

He would meet with the children of Israel. I'll talk a little bit in just a second about the process or the ritual that was involved there.

Inside the Ark, in verse 4, you'll notice it mentions that this inner sanctuary called the

Holy of Holies, having a golden altar of incense, and the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark was covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar containing the manna and Aaron's rod which budded, and the tables of the

Covenant, and above it, verse 5 says, and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the

Mercy Seat. So here you have what is in the Ark at Timna, the replication of it, or the replica of it, the tables of stone, and Aaron's, and that's manna, if you want to know what manna looks like,

I guess that's it, looks like coriander seed, that fell from, can you imagine picking that up every day and having to feed your whole family, one at a time, like picking sunflower seeds up off the ground?

So, inside the Ark, in the time of Moses, those three items were placed, the manna, which was a token of God's provision for the nation, and a reminder of his provision and care for them for those 40 years in the wilderness wandering, the rod,

Aaron's rod which budded during that controversy over is Aaron really the chosen priest, and his rod budded of all the tribes, and so he was certified, the tribe of Levi, and the family of Aaron, they were the priests of God, and then the table of the covenant, the

Ten Commandments which were carved in stone, you remember Moses broke the first set that came down from the mountain, and then he re -etched those

Ten Commandments in stone, they placed those inside of the Ark. Now, here's the question, where is the Ark today, and does anybody know?

I get answered this quite often. I don't know that anybody knows where the Ark of the Covenant is today, it's not in some massive warehouse stored with a whole bunch of other relics somewhere, we know that.

There is rumors that there is a massive cavern underneath the Temple Mount that the priests used to use that's been discovered during excavations on the north end of the

Temple Mount, right alongside the northern wall of the Temple Wall, there's a massive cavern that's been discovered under there, maybe the

Ark of the Covenant's sitting under there. The Ark, for all intents and purposes, has been lost to history, nobody knows where it went, just like nobody knows where the original tabernacle, all of the materials went.

Some people suggest that it went into the Temple Treasury, and it was stored there to keep it protected from invading hordes, but ultimately nobody knows where the

Ark is. We know that by the time of Solomon, in 1 Kings 8 verse 9, when

Solomon built his temple and they took the Ark into the Temple, the author of 1 Kings says that at that time it was just the tablets of stone inside the

Ark. At some point prior to Solomon, the manna had been removed and Aaron's rod had been removed from the

Ark. Where they're at, nobody knows, it's lost to history as well. By 63

BC, there was an invasion, I think it's Ptolemy, I think it was Ptolemy, there was an invasion into the land of Israel, and there is a historical record that when they went back into the

Holy of Holies in Solomon's temple there, that it was an empty room, and the Ark was gone, and nobody knows where it went.

Was it removed prior to that invasion to keep it safe? Was it lost in the Babylonian captivity of 586?

Nobody knows. But in all likelihood, it was gone even by the time of Jesus. By the day of Jesus, the

Ark was not there. So for however long, that blood was not applied to the mercy seat. All of this that we've looked at here is the fulfillment of the

Old Covenant, and all of it is revealed as part of the Old Covenant, and what I want you to understand is that everything that we've looked at here, this was not a bunch of tribal

Jews wandering in the wilderness trying to scratch and claw their way to God. This was revealed holy religion for the nation of Israel.

This is what God revealed as to his specification for how he was to be approached. So keep that in mind.

I want to describe to you the ritual, and I'm going to go soft on the animal sacrifice part of this. Animals were sacrificed outside in the courtyard, publicly in front of anybody.

If you were standing in the courtyard, or you were peeking up over, if you were tall enough, and some of you are, you'll be able to peek up over the curtain of the tabernacle, you can see the sacrifice taking place in broad daylight in front of everybody.

It was not hidden. Just the same as our Lord was sacrificed publicly, right? Right alongside the main road that comes into Jerusalem, that's where our

Lord hung, so that everybody coming in to him, coming in to the city for the Feast of Passover would have been able to see the sacrifice for sin.

It was a public sacrifice out in front of everybody. So the animal was tied to the horns of the altar.

Our Lord did not have to be tied to that cross. He went there willingly. Nobody compelled him but himself in his own love for us.

The animal was tied to the altar, and there he was killed and burned. The priest would wash at the laver, and blood from the animal, which would coat the coals that burned the burnt offering, would be taken inside and applied to the horns of the altar, and the coals from that sacrifice would be taken and put on the altar of incense as well.

These things happened daily. Those sacrifices happened daily. Those coals were brought in daily. The incense burned continually.

The showbread was changed once a week. The lampstand was trimmed, and by the way, that lampstand was the only source of light inside the tabernacle, because there were four coats of skins and layers of cloth over top of that.

There was no exterior light. There was no other entrance to the tabernacle, only one, and there were no windows in the tabernacle.

The only source of light was that lampstand, which the priest trimmed continually to keep it burning. It was used olive oil, burned olive oil.

They would keep this burning continually so that there was light inside the tabernacle. Once a year on Yom Kippur, which is the

Day of Atonement, was the high and holy day. The high priest, and only the high priest, would go through his normal ritual for offering a burnt offering.

He would come in and apply the blood to the four horns of the altar of incense and put the coals there, and then he would take with him on that day and that day alone, and only one day of the year,

Yom Kippur, he would take the incense from the altar of incense, and he would take the blood of the sacrifice, and he would go back into the second chamber, the

Holy of Holies, behind the second veil, and there, with the incense burning, so as to create smoke in there, with the incense burning and with the blood, he would sprinkle the

Ark of the Covenant so it never looked as shiny as it did that. I mentioned that some weeks ago. It never looked as shiny as it did there after the first sacrifice.

Because from that point forward, after the first sacrifice, from then on, there was blood applied to it every year, consistently, and it was never cleaned or washed, unless it was transported outside in heavy rain, that blood would have never been washed off.

So every year, the high priest would go back in there with his incense from the altar of incense and the blood of the sacrifice, and he would apply the blood to that mercy seat first for his own sins, and then he would go outside and offer another sacrifice for the sins of the children of Israel, and he would do that whole thing all over again.

Come back into the tabernacle and apply the blood to the four horns of the altar of incense, take incense from that, and go back into the

Holy of Holies, and there he would sprinkle the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant with the blood of the sacrifice, right up there between the wings of the cherubim.

This he did, this sacrifice was only made on the Day of Atonement, on Yom Kippur, and the symbolism here is quite evident, actually, if you can imagine this.

And by the way, when the blood was applied on the mercy seat over the

Ark of the Covenant, remember what was inside the Ark? The law, which was broken. Where did

God meet with us? With his people. Where did he meet with his people? Right over top of that law, which we had broken.

But what was the covering? And that's the word that is used for mercy seat, it's a word that means covering.

In the Greek, it's actually translated, in the Greek Old Testament, that word for mercy seat is translated as propitiation, and it means the covering for sin.

So over top of the broken law, the law that we have broken, the blood is applied so that God can meet with men, so that he is propitiated, he is satisfied in terms of that broken law, and there he can meet with us.

That's the seat of mercy. So that happened once a year. This service, everything that was done here, and everything

I've described to you, pictured the sacrifice for Christ. I hope you're seeing that this whole thing, this whole thing is the work of Christ in pictures.

Can you see that? All of this is the work of Christ in pictures. He fulfilled all of this.

There's one entrance to the tabernacle, courtyard. One entrance and one entrance only. And there is one entrance to the tabernacle, and there is one entrance to the

Holy of Holies. And now, just as then, if you wanted to approach

God and draw near to his presence, there's only one way to approach God, and that is through the sacrifice that he has made.

That is by his provision. There was no back door to the tabernacle. You couldn't sneak into the tabernacle through a back door or through a window.

If you wanted to approach God, there was one path and one way by which you had to approach him, and it's the same today, and that is through Jesus Christ.

And as you walked into the courtyard of the temple, and I want to describe here the symbolism for this. And by the way,

I'm not going to get too, no, before I get into the symbolism, let me make a bit of a, what would you call it, a disclaimer.

We need to be very careful with how far we go with symbolism, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, because some people go wild.

So while I'm giving you the dimensions for the tabernacle, you can find people who will take all those, you know, so many cubits by so many cubits, and they'll construct a big elaborate numerological doctrine off of that.

We don't do that. You know, you take this number, which represents this, times this number, which represents this, and you divide it by three, which is the number of the

Trinity, and you add the square root of the number of times that Joel Osteen smiles during a sermon, you come up with this number, which actually represents this, and they build a whole doctrine off of it.

All of that is just hogwash. The whole, all the numerology. It doesn't mean that no number in Scripture is significant, but it does mean that not every number in Scripture is significant, and how do you know which ones are significant?

Scripture will tell you which numbers are significant, and you keep it at that, and you'll be safe. The same thing with the symbolism. I don't know if you noticed this or not, and I'm just gonna,

I'm just gonna throw this observation up there, but I'm not gonna make anything of it, because this is how I think some of the Old Testament stuff needs to be approached.

Did you notice on the layout of the tabernacle up there that I had several slides ago, that everything is in a line all the way across?

You come in, there's the brazen altar, and then the laver, and then the altar of incense, and then the Ark of the

Covenant, and then there's the candlestick, and then there's the showbread? Well, if you draw lines between all of those, it does make the shape of a cross in the tabernacle.

What do we make of that? I'm not gonna make anything of that, because Scripture doesn't make anything of that. I'm just observing it.

Now, there's a lot of significance and symbolism in the, in the table, in the furniture that is part of the tabernacle, and I wanna give you some of the symbolism here, and I'm not gonna draw this too tight, but I just want you to see some similarities.

Okay, first, there is one entrance. Second, when you came into the courtyard of the tabernacle, the first thing you would have to do is walk across or walk right by the brazen altar.

That was a reminder that if you are going to approach God, the first thing is you must have a sacrifice. You could not approach Him without a sacrifice.

You couldn't even walk close to the tabernacle without walking past the place where animals, innocent animals, were sacrificed on behalf of sinners.

Then you would have to walk past the laver, and you must be cleansed. You had to be clean before you could come to God, and you must be cleansed from your sin.

You must be cleansed from your sin. That was where the priests would wash themselves before, after offering the sacrifice, they would wash themselves there before they would enter into the tabernacle itself.

And then when you entered into the tabernacle, there was the light on the left -hand side and the bread on the right -hand side, and Jesus said,

I am the light of the world, and I am the bread of life, and bread and light in Scripture are significant. Bread was a symbol of God's provision,

His abundant blessing, His grace, and His goodness, and light was a symbol of God's presence, His protection, His power, and His glory.

And then the smoke of the incense came up off of the altar, the coals that had been taken from the altar of the sacrifice.

So it was the sacrifice that burned inside of the tabernacle, that burned the incense that created that holy aroma.

Behind the curtain was the ark and the mercy seat where the blood had to be applied because there God must be propitiated.

He must be satisfied because sin demands a judgment. Sin demands justice. It demands a sacrifice.

As Hebrews chapter 9 says, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. That's God's economy.

There must be blood shed in order for sins to be forgiven. And only once was access permitted to God behind the veil, and that by a representative.

A representative who first had to offer a sacrifice for his own sins before he could come in and offer a sacrifice for the sins of the people.

And so access to God was limited. Now when Christ died, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, indicating that the access to God is wide open, but it's still only through one door, through Jesus Christ, and not through any other means.

Because that sacrifice and that sacrifice alone makes men righteous and atones for sin. And that is why it is still only through Christ and Christ alone.

And inside the ark of the covenant was the law which we have broke, and over that covering was the mercy seat where God would show mercy to his people, but only if the blood was applied.

And only on that one day of the year. And there God would be merciful. My friends, this is the gospel in pictures.

It's the gospel in pictures. God is high and holy, and he cannot be approached except by a sacrifice.

And to come to God, there is one entrance and one entrance only. He cannot be approached except with a sacrifice, because our sin requires an atonement.

And the death of Jesus, God's own son, fulfills all of this. He is the one who is the bread of life, providing sustenance and blessing for his people.

He is the light of the world, who delivers men out of darkness and into his kingdom of light. He is the one who has entered for us behind the veil.

He is the anchor, Hebrews chapter 4, 5, somewhere in there. He is the anchor that holds behind the veil, a forerunner for us, and there he holds.

He has entered in where we, when they will go, not into a tabernacle made with hens, but into a heavenly tabernacle, where he appears in the presence of God for us.

Where the merits of his sacrifice propitiate and satisfy

God on our behalf. That's what Christ has done. Everything about the tabernacle pointed forward to the

Lord Jesus Christ. And now having come and offered that one sacrifice for sins, and having sat down at the right hand of God on high, where he makes intercession for us, no more sacrifice is needed, nothing else is necessary, no more propitiation for sin is required, the righteousness that the law demands has been provided for us in the person of Christ, and the sacrifice that he has made is sufficient to atone for the sins of any and all who will believe.

And if you want your sins forgiven, there is one way and one way only, and it is through the Lord Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that he has made.

He has fulfilled all of the pictures, all of the symbols of the old covenant. One last thing before I close in prayer.

Maybe some of you already noticed this, and this is just a little bit of a teaser for next week. Do you notice in verse 4, verse 3, look at verse 3, 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. Now did anybody notice that in the book of Hebrews, he places the altar of incense behind the second veil, apparently, with the

Ark of the Covenant, and yet according to Scripture it was in the outer section with the table of showbread and the lampstand?

That's kind of odd, isn't it? I don't know why he did that. Is that a contradiction? Sorry, is that a contradiction in Scripture, that the author of Hebrews would do that?

Did he get it wrong? Did he not understand where the altar of incense was? Let's see, let's pray.

Father, you're so merciful to us in providing a sacrifice for sins which your law demanded. We thank you that there is hope for sinners in Jesus Christ and that you have made a way by which we can come boldly into your presence and approach you, not because we are righteous in and of ourselves, but because you have given us the righteousness of Christ and you have taken our sins out of the way.

You are glorious and good and merciful and we thank you that you are long -suffering and compassionate, that for thousands of years you suffered long, waiting for that day when you would make a sacrifice for sin, and you have shown mercy to your people both under the

Old Covenant as well as to us today, and so we thank you for that mercy. We thank you that the mercy seat has been covered by the blood of Christ and that you have shown us your grace by his merit.

We thank you for all these things and we pray that you would impress these truths, the symbolism, and the fullness of the work of Christ upon our hearts this morning.