January 25, 2021 Show with Angelo Valle on “What Christians Can Learn From the Tabernacle”

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday. On this 25th day of January 2021,

I'm thrilled to have back as a returning guest today, Pastor Angelo Valli, who is pastor of Christ Reformed Church of Alexandria, Pennsylvania, and he is going to be discussing what

Christians can learn from the tabernacle, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Angelo Valli.

Thanks, Chris. It's a joy to be back here with you. And also co -hosting the program with me is someone who is a returning guest on this program,

Dr. Jeffrey Waddington. Dr. Jeffrey Waddington is certainly no stranger to those who listen to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio regularly.

He's been on the program quite a number of times. He is the pastor at Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, and it's great to have you joining me as my co -host today,

Dr. Jeffrey Waddington. Hello, brothers. It's great to be here with you on this

Monday afternoon. It really is a privilege to be with both

Angelicus and Christophorus, to use their real live names.

It is a real joy to be with you and to be talking about this significant issue in terms of understanding how to read the

Old Testament the way it ought to be read, with a Christ -centered focus.

Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away. If you have questions about the

Tabernacle, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

As always, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you're asking something that has to do with a theological matter where you differ from your own pastor or your own congregation or denomination, or perhaps you're even a pastor.

You disagree with your fellow elders or your denomination over something that you are asking about.

Well, in those cases and other cases where it really is best for everyone that you remain anonymous,

I will certainly allow you to remain anonymous. But please, if it's just a general question on the

Scriptures, on theology, on the Tabernacle, please, if it's just a general question, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Well, first of all, let me have each of you, for the sake of our listeners who have never heard either of you on the program before,

Angelo, if you could tell our listeners about the Christ Reformed Church of Alexandria, Pennsylvania. Sure, Brother, it would be my joy.

The Christ Reformed Church of Alexandria was planted by John Dietrich Arand. He was a member of the

Continental Army. When he became enamored with proclaiming the Gospel around central Pennsylvania, he committed himself to planting churches all throughout the area, and this is one of those churches.

This very church where we're at has a tradition in the German Reformed tradition, and by God's grace, it's coming into the

Presbyterian Church in America, Lord willing, this year. We're excited to be part of a confessional Presbyterian denomination, and we're just an ordinary means -of -grace church committed to word and sacrament, and seeing

Christ transform His people through those means. Praise God.

Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Christ Reformed Church of Alexandria, Pennsylvania, go to crcalexandria .org,

crcalexandria .org, and hopefully we will remember to repeat that information at the end of the program.

And, Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, why don't you let our listeners know about Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania.

Sure. Thank you, Chris. Faith OPC, in the beautiful little town of Fawn Grove, here on the

Pennsylvania -Maryland border in central Pennsylvania, about three hours directly south of Angelo, and about an hour south or southeast of Carlisle.

The church has been in existence for over 85, I guess this year, 85 years.

And like what Angela said, we are an ordinary means -of -grace congregation, stressing the importance of the preaching of the

Word, the right or proper observance of the sacraments of baptism and Lord's Supper, and also, of course, we're concerned about how our brothers and sisters relate to one another, and also how we relate to the world, that we desire to be modeled after our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, not as a means of gaining God's favor, but because we already have it.

So that's our focus. And we'd love to have visitors, if you're ever in this area, as I say, just on the

Mason -Dixon line. About half our congregation is from Maryland, half from Pennsylvania.

And when you say ordinary means of grace, you believe that the preaching of the

Gospel and the administration of the sacraments or ordinances are the ordinary means by which the

Lord brings His elect to Himself and saves them, and there are less frequent, very less frequent, extraordinary means and ways where people are saved in different miraculous ways, but those are the ordinary means, right?

Yes. How do you use the word ordinary? Yes. When we say ordinary, what we really mean is

God's ordained. So we're getting the word ordinary from the word ordained.

Okay. But yes, even the ordinary means are supernatural, right?

The ordinary means aren't merely human. The word of God, yes, is human, but most importantly, divine.

Just as the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, is both God and man in one person.

So what we're saying is that we are seeking to be the

Church the way that God has laid out in His word. He hasn't left it to us to make up things as we go along.

Right. And if anybody wants more information on the Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, go to faithopc .net,

faithopc .net. Well, since we are discussing the tabernacle,

Pastor Angelo, if you could start off with a definition of exactly what the tabernacle was, so our listeners have a frame of reference, perhaps they're new believers, perhaps they're not even

Christians, and they're really not 100 % familiar with the terminology we may be using. They may have heard the word tabernacle, but they really don't understand what that is.

Start off with a working definition for us. Sure. So the tabernacle, when we are considering that idea in general, we're thinking about the tent of worship that God demanded of His people that He might meet with them in the wilderness, as He was leading them after the days of Israel's exodus from Egypt into the

Promised Land. It was the place where God would meet with His people, where they would offer sacrifices and prayers and come together for worship daily.

It was just the meeting place of God, His visible presence at the very heart and center of His people.

And we find that in the book of Exodus, chapter 25 to 40. And since we are in the

New Covenant, why preach on the tabernacle? That's a great question.

We are often, I don't know about you guys, but I never really heard a sermon series about the tabernacle growing up. Did you guys ever hear something about that?

Well, since I was raised Roman Catholic, I very rarely heard anything about anything in the Bible growing up, other than the main events, if you will, about the virgin incarnation and birth of Christ and His death and resurrection, which are obviously extremely important.

But there wasn't much else discussed in Catholic school, parochial school.

I remember we all had to buy, or our parents had to buy the Good News for Modern Man Bible, modern

English translation of the Bible, in a Catholic edition, of course. And those

Bibles, I can't even remember pulling them out of my desk when I was in Catholic school. But anyway, do you have anything to add?

And by the way, Dr. Jeff Waddington, since I cannot see you, I cannot see you waving your hand,

I cannot read facial expressions. If you would like to ask a question, as long as you hear a lull in the conversation, chime in with one.

Or even if you want to add your own two cents to the answer of a question, that would be fine.

I'd love to expand on this some more. Okay, Angelo, go ahead. Well, the reason

I asked if you had ever heard a sermon on this, because I had never myself. I've been raised in the Church. I have been very familiar with various sermon series.

I went out of my way to listen to different sermon series, and I actually had a bit of a difficult time, as I was preparing for my sermon, finding some good resources on the

Tabernacle. And so far as I mean sermon series, I found only something from Kevin D.

Young, a friend of ours. He was a fellow OPC minister. And so we preach on the

Tabernacle because it's part of the Bible. We believe that the whole Bible is given to the

Church for gratification, right? That's not unique to me, that's from the Apostle Paul. If you think of 2

Timothy 3 .16, all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

Paul is reminding us that all is Scripture, not just his epistles, not just the Gospel that we happen to like or know best, or the

Psalms, but the whole of the Old and New Testament is for our good and for our edification.

And so, with that being the case, our congregation in particular holds to Lectio Continua, this continued reading, which is, again, part of the heart of patristic preaching models, as well as Reformed preaching models, and we preach through whole books.

So, we started through Exodus several years ago, and we just kept going. Great. And what specific texts in the

Scripture do we find more details on the Tabernacle? Well, we can look at the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews has been, in many ways, our great guide to understanding the significance of the

Old Testament Levitical system of worship, and its fulfillment in the person and work of the

Lord Jesus Christ. We find, again, the quote from Augustine, it's very famous, in the

Old, the New is concealed, and in the New, the Old is revealed. We recognize that the

New Testament is the means by which we better understand what was revealed to us in the Old.

And so, Hebrews has been a regular place of grounding for me in my own studies and research.

I was going to add that one of the, I guess you would say one of the more recent trends in the study of the

Bible is how the New Testament uses the Old Testament. And, of course,

Hebrews would be a perfect place to go to see how that is to be done.

And so, we don't have to reinvent the wheel all the time. There is plenty in the book of Hebrews about the

Tabernacle, and then, of course, later its more permanent form, the Temple. But this is very significant, and of course,

Angela will be giving us more details, filling out the picture, if I can put it that way.

Now, I think that Hebrews is... Oh, go ahead, brother. I was going to say,

I think Hebrews is most explicitly helpful in a one -to -one correlation. For example, it talks of the tent, it talks of the veil, it talks of various portions and sacrifices and applications of blood.

But I think there's also methodological implications for our own approach in the epistles of Paul.

We might do it by means of induction. How is he using various Old Testament stories and narratives as a means of teaching us how we ought to approach the

Old Testament? I'm of the opinion that we ought to utilize the hermeneutics of the apostles as they demonstrate.

So 1 Corinthians 10 would be a great example as well, verse 1 -11, on the significance of the

Old Testament narrative and its application for us as a church today, its benefit for us.

Yesterday I was preaching on Romans 15, 1 -13, and in the middle of that, the passage

Paul yields talks about the benefit of the scriptures.

Both God and His Word are the means of the strengthening, the fortification, if you will, of believers, the building up of believers.

And there he addresses that the

Old Testament specifically was written for our instruction.

For our instruction. That's quite a statement for the Apostle Paul to make originally to the

Church of Rome, but then to us as well as the contemporary readers of God's Word.

It's not merely a bare book that we're looking at. We're reading God's Word.

It's living and active and sharper than any two -edged sword. And we have a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who says, what words of counsel, rebuke, or chastisement do you have for those churches and denominations and fellowships who believe that the

Old Testament is nothing more than helpful history and sometimes people are even encouraged to buy

New Testaments that are detached from the Old Testament and may have the book of Psalms with them.

But is this really the wisest thing to do when it comes to carrying the

Word of God with you? Jeff, do you mind if I answer this one first?

Go ahead. My first thought would be to simply look at the resurrected Christ.

What does He do in Luke chapter 24? We think about Him on the road to Emmaus, right?

Luke 24, 27 says, And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the

Scriptures the things concerning Himself. He goes a little further on. Luke tells us in verse 44 of that same chapter,

There are many words that I spoke to you while I was still with you that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the

Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. And we also think about 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 8.

It talks about the work of Christ being in accordance with the Scriptures. We can't make sense out of the unique work of the

Lord Jesus Christ if we don't have the appropriate Old Testament foundation. And so I think that there is sometimes a danger, and this might be a little passé at this point, it was big maybe a decade ago when

I was a student in seminary, where people highlight some portions of the Bible and neglect the others.

Now, most Christians aren't typically self -consciously doing that, but it becomes dangerous that the whole

Bible is our book. Not just the Psalms, not just the Gospels, not just the red letters of Christ. The whole

Bible for the whole man. That's what God Himself says in 2 Timothy 3 .16. Now, wouldn't it, in spite of what you said, would it not be appropriate, or at least can we not say that we cannot rule out ever owning and carrying with us a

Bible that only contains the New Testament or the New Testament and Psalms or something like that? When it comes to, like for instance, the

Gideons have a version of the Bible that is a New Testament with Psalms, I believe, and it's very small.

When you're talking about, depending upon what you do for a living or what kind of clothing you know that you'll be wearing a particular day, is it ever wrong to just have a very tiny

Bible in your church pocket that only contains the New Testament and Psalms or just the

New Testament? And if you're giving away many, many copies of the Scriptures for free, as long as you're telling people that this is not the entirety of the canon of Scripture, but that this is just a handy way, a handy size, a handy packaging that people can give away in great numbers and people can carry with them easily that does contain crucial parts of the

Scriptures and typically the entire New Testament Scriptures anyway. Am I off base here?

Well, I think there's nothing wrong with that. Oh, go ahead, Jeff. I was going to say the same thing, Angelo.

As long as the person doesn't act on the idea that the

Old Testament is passé or irrelevant, or even that we have a well -known mega -church pastor in the

South who has said that Christians need to decouple the New Testament from the

Old Testament. Unhitch ourselves. Yes, that's

Andy Stanley, who has made those comments and similar things frequently in his preaching and writing, and of course those things are also recorded for live streaming and on the website, and so he's been very clear on that.

That's a very dangerous way to approach the Old Testament, just to reject it outright. It's properly unchristian, because Christ doesn't do that, and the apostles don't do that, and the early church doesn't do that.

In our day... Go ahead, your question is open. I was just going to say, in our day, with smartphones, the need to have a small, compact hard copy of the

New Testament Psalms may not be as significant as it was in the days before the advent of the cell phones, smartphones in particular.

But still, there's nothing wrong with giving those away or having one on your person, just as long as you know that you remember that it's not the whole

Bible, and if you're giving them away, tell people that it's not the whole Bible. Yes, there are even churches that actually will call themselves, we are a

New Testament church, and one can only wonder what exactly they mean by that, because obviously we're not

Judaizers, well, at least those that are on this program right now are not, but at the same time, it's,

I think, an odd description to refer to yourself as a New Testament church. But anyway, Angelo, you had some other things you wanted to say.

Sure, I have a small copy of the Gospel of John that I was gifted, and I don't see any issue with giving that away to a person, right?

We think about the early days of the Church and how the Gospels and other writings were originally coming out piecemeal, little by little.

I don't think there's an issue with that if you are, again, thinking of what Jeff's talking about.

The ordinary Christian, I don't presume that they're going to have this strong reticence against the

Old Testament as the Word of God, but again, you do have certain heretics and people who are in serious error who would try to divorce that.

I don't think there's a problem with that, with having a small Bible or just the New Testament if you're going somewhere.

Again, it's not best, but it is still better than nothing. And when we come back from our first break,

I'd like, Angelo, for you to begin to enter into how we should approach understanding the tabernacle.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air, the question of your own, again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and as always, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is

Angelo Valley, pastor of Christ Reformed Church of Alexandria, Pennsylvania, a church that will soon be officially entering into fellowship with the

Presbyterian Church in America denomination. And co -hosting with me is

Dr. Jeffrey Waddington, pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania.

We are addressing what Christians can learn from the tabernacle, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence when you have a question. And before we go into what

I was just hinting at before the break, with Angelo giving us a summary of how he believes we should approach understanding the tabernacle,

I do have a listener who wants something that I said clarified.

So after I answer, maybe you guys can bail me out if you want to. We have an anonymous listener who said earlier,

Chris was distinguishing between the miraculous ways that God sometimes saves and the ways that he normally does through the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments or ordinances.

Is Chris denying Romans chapter 10, 17, so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God?

No, I'm not denying that at all. What I was doing was

I was doing a play on words there because the ordinary means, or as Dr.

Waddington said, those means that are ordained by God for the church are in fact, even though they involve the miraculous, anytime you have a dead heart of stone and a spiritually dead person being resurrected spiritually, being brought to life, regenerated, having their heart of stone removed and Christ giving them a heart of flesh and the

Holy Spirit breathing new life into them, that is miraculous. But the preaching of the gospel and the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments or ordinances are ordinary using the play on words in that they occur every week by the church if a church is faithfully functioning as a biblical church.

And there are those circumstances where I'm sure, especially sure since my guests are

Paedo -Baptists and I'm not, but even Reformed Baptists believe that there are occasions when people are saved in the womb.

We can't obviously detect who those people are, but John the

Baptist, there is evidence, clear evidence I believe, that he was regenerate in the womb.

And there are other ways, the gospel is always the methodology that is somehow imparted to the mind of the lost person's consciousness, but the preaching of the word is not always the way that the person comes to Christ.

There are people who, I mentioned the Gideons before, there are people who got saved in their hotel rooms picking up a

Gideon Bible. There are incidents in history where missionaries who were being attacked by those within the false religions of the nations where they were attempting to spread the gospel.

They were being physically attacked, and there was at least one occasion I remember hearing from history where a boat that was fleeing to safety as it was being attacked, the missionaries were throwing

Bibles on the shore in the language of those native peoples, and then people got saved from the

Bibles that they picked up. So am I making sense, brothers? Did I in any way bail myself out of those comments?

Oh, I think you did in those ways. Yeah, you did a great job. I think you did fine there,

Brother Chris. Maybe another way to say this is that the ordinary way that God brings people to faith in Christ is through the corporate worship of the people of God.

But there are many times where people come to faith in Christ outside of the gathered worship of God's people.

So that may be a clearer way of getting at what you were saying. Right. Hospital deathbed conversions and things where sometimes somebody may have heard the gospel decades ago, maybe even as a child, and they're lying in their hospital bed in their 90s, and all of a sudden, because of God's miraculous work of grace in their hearts and minds, they say,

I get it. Jesus Christ is my Savior. I need Jesus. You know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, there was, back in the 1700s, there was a

Christian who came to faith in his or her 80s or 90s by recalling what they had heard the evangelist

George Whitefield preach one time. There's an example where, yes, they heard the preaching of the gospel, but it had its effect many, many, many years later.

So, yeah, we recognize that people come to faith in Christ or grow in grace in ways outside of the corporate worship of God's people with simply saying that the scriptures are clear, that the normal way these things happen.

And they're being commanded to be used. Right, right. That's correct.

It's not just a deduction. It's stated rather clearly throughout the

Old and the New Testament that God's people are to gather to worship

Him. Okay. That's the ordinary context for people coming to faith.

Okay, Angelo, unless you have anything further to add, now let us enter into how we should approach understanding the

Tabernacle. Just a quick note. Historically, we think of St. Augustine, one of the greatest minds in all of Christianity.

Pick up and read. By accidentally coming across, yeah, that's right, this accidentally seemingly coming across the top of the

Bible and hearing some children's voice somehow singing a song, pick up and read, and he was converted, and the church was never the same.

It's the better. Yep. But now, if you could, let us discuss how we should approach understanding the

Tabernacle. Okay. So methodologically, I think there's a lot of different ways we could approach it.

Again, trying to find some useful modern resources for the believers today, I think one of the best guides is actually a recent work relatively by Daniel Hyde called

God in Our Midst. Are you familiar with that book at all? Yes. In fact, I've had

Danny on the show, and if anybody's listening, they think I'm doing disrespect by calling him

Danny. He calls himself Danny publicly. Yes, and I'm looking forward to having him back on the program, actually.

He's remarkable. He's one of my favorite present -living pastors who are writing.

He's just got such a wonderful clarity and dip into the tristic well as well as the reformed and post -reformed well.

He has this six -fold method in his book, God in Our Mists, that has just been so helpful for me in approaching it.

I thought it might be best just to kind of highlight those six points and encourage our present audience with that.

Sure. So the first one is clear. Read the Old Testament of Scripture, right?

When we're reading about the Tabernacle, again, we use terminology sometimes and want to pop it up.

The Tabernacle is remarkable. There's never a tent like it, right? You're not going to go to Lowe's or something,

Cabela's, and find a tent quite like the Tabernacle. It's very unique. Even the word tabernaculum comes to us from the

Latin just simply for tent. But when we come to this idea in the Old Testament, we're reading it simply as Scripture.

The Old Testament is Scripture. It's not second -class Scripture. It's not mostly Scripture. It is

Scripture. I felt Christ presented it, and so we need to receive it as such. The second angle

I think is important is for us to see that as we're coming to this somewhat strange and maybe foreign aspect of the

Bible, we need to recognize it's also there for our devotional good. We want to recognize that Scripture is not just given for the sake of information but also to help us be like Christ, to be transformed.

For example, we think of Psalm 19, 7. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. There is this unique experiential applicatory dynamic that we want to recognize.

The next part, which we've already hinted at in parts so far from our earlier discussions, is we want to read this portion of the

Bible through the lens of the New Testament. We have the fullness of God's revelation for us.

There's no more supernatural revelation coming out contrary to the Mormons. We're not waiting for the

Better Testament next season. It's not like a car with the 2022 editions coming out, get ready.

We are standing on the sufficiency of God's perfect Word. Hebrews 1 highlights the supremacy and climactic reality of this

New Testament revelation in the coming of Christ. Yes, God spoke to us and to our fathers through the prophets, but in these last days

He's spoken to us through His Son. With His Son in mind, the fourth aspect is that we want to read these portions of the

Scriptures as having their fulfillment in Christ. We recognize that Christ is the telos, or the end, or the destination, of all the

Old Testament. The entirety of the Old Testament points forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as the

God -man, as our prophet, priest, and king, and His humiliation and exaltation. Everything is pointing forward to Him.

So we have to recognize when we read an Old Testament portion, how is this pointing forward to Christ?

And I think that's very important. There's one more thing that I think I want to add in addition.

We need to read the Bible simply. One of my favorite things is reading the Bible with my kids because they see stuff

I never see. I've often heard it said that Revelation is complicated for adults and simple for children.

They get the idea, bad guys lose, good guys win. And so sometimes when we read these strange or difficult portions of the

Old Testament that are perhaps not as familiar with the Gospel of John, we need to really come to them a bit more simply and ask, you know, what is this here for?

Why is this written? And again, to hammer it home again, we want to read these texts for the sake of Christian living, not only for our own hearts, but for our life.

You know, doctrine is meant to impact our life. Our knowledge of God changes us from the inside out.

So I would say those kind of broad points would be really important, not only to the Tabernacle, but to any portion of the

Old Testament, because it causes us to recognize it appropriately, to see it in the broader scheme of God's special revelation or history of redemption.

And you would say... I'm sorry, go ahead, Chris. No, no, go ahead, Dr. Wallington. Yeah, I was just going to say,

Angela, I think you would agree with me that Nanny doesn't intend for this to be...

these each to be separate steps, but they are to be...

we are to be thoughtful as we read the Old Testament in particular with these six elements in mind as they interact with one another, right?

So it's not, well, I'm going to read the Book of Exodus first as Scripture, then

I'm going to go back and read it devotionally, then I'm going to go back and read it through a New Testament lens, generally, then

I'm going to go back and read it as fulfilled in Christ, and then I'm going to read them simply.

In other words, when you're reading the Book of Exodus in particular, as an example, each of these elements should be at work when we read the

Scriptures. I would agree with that. So they're interacting, if you will, interrelated, so that you read the

Scripture as Scripture, that is, as God's Word, and that, of course, entails reading them devotionally.

In other words, for our spiritual enrichment. Yes, there is information, so we don't want to deny that.

We're not mystical. We believe there is information that we learn, but it's not meant to stop there, right?

It's meant to go further and to impact our hearts and minds.

And then, of course, we read these texts, finding their fulfillment in the

New Testament, and then in fulfillment in Christ in particular. Sure, I agree with that.

Go ahead. I was going to say, I like to think of it like a web. You know, if you were to examine a spider web, you would say, this whole mess is a web.

But if you wanted to trace the individual lines, it would not be at the cross of the whole, but recognizing the various parts as they come together.

That in this instance, to examine the one is to examine the whole. And so those things that I've mentioned, those different approaches,

I think they're all intersecting or interpenetrating together for the sake of clarifying what

God has said for our good. That's an excellent illustration to use the idea of the spider web that helps us to get a sense of how we are to approach all of the

Bible, but especially the Old Testament portion, which we may think are odd or unusual because they're older than the

New Testament, further back in time and more remote to us. But nevertheless, they are

God's Word for us, written for our benefit. Well, I'd like you to begin, and we're going to have to cut to our midway break very soon.

But obviously there is much from the Old Testament, the

Hebrew Scriptures, that benefits our lives as Christians. In fact, children are probably raised in Christian homes hearing more about Old Testament stories than they are

New Testament stories. There's just a lot in the Hebrew Scriptures that God has intended to use to lead us to the promised

Messiah, Jesus Christ, and to enrich our walk with him.

But how specifically, amongst all of these stories and all of these teachings and all of these truths in the

Hebrew Scriptures, how specifically are there more ways where the tabernacle uniquely can be of great benefit to Christians and so on?

And how they should be taught, and what we should glean from them, specifically? Well, I think the unique place of the tabernacle, it reveals to us this inherent corporate dynamic of God's interactions with mankind.

We're not just looking at the Exodus events, because again, we have to see the tabernacle in light of the larger story of Exodus, which is of God's deliverance of his people.

But God's deliverance of his people is for the purpose of his indwelling presence in their midst.

God doesn't simply say, alright, here's your Get Out of Egypt free card, good luck to you, don't screw this up.

Instead, he invites his people to come near to him. In fact, the reason that they are redeemed in the first place is so that they might be reconciled to him.

In many ways, it's pointing back to the reality of Eden in a way that man had not experienced at that point in the history of special, or in the history of redemption.

God had not drawn near to his people in such an established way since Eden. And so there was a unique reality occurring with the framing and establishing of the tabernacle.

Not only was it an echo back to Eden, and the glory of man's closeness to God before the fall, but it's also a foreshadowing, as Jeff's already pointed to, of the reality of God's temple through Solomon, and chiefly through the person and work of the

Lord Jesus Christ, who is the living, abiding tabernacle. And indeed, the apostle

John points to that in John chapter 1, where he uses the same word in Greek for tabernacle, for the word tabernacling amongst us, as is used in the

Greek Old Testament for the tabernacle itself. So there's this unique dynamic of God's yearning desire to be with his people.

Again, it comes through great sacrifice, much blood, much purification, but still, this hint of heaven made manifest, this hint of reconciliation made manifest most uniquely.

Great. Well, we have to go to our midway break right now. Please be patient with us, folks, because the midway break is the longer break in the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because the FCC requires of them to localize all of their programming, including

Iron Sherpins Iron, geographically to Lake City, Florida. So during our midway break, that is the time when

Grace Life Radio airs their own public service announcements and other local things that localize the show to Lake City, Florida.

While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials, where everyone else listening via live streaming is hearing the ads that we are broadcasting.

So please make best use of this time. Write down as much of the information as you can for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers, and that will mean that our advertisers will more than likely remain our advertisers, which will mean that we,

God willing, will more than likely remain on the air, because we absolutely positively depend upon our advertisers to exist.

Sometimes reaching out to our advertisers just means that you're contacting them to thank them for sponsoring the show.

If you can't purchase what they're selling, if you can't use their services, if you can't visit their churches, well, then please at least reach out to them to thank them, if indeed that's true, that you do thank them for sponsoring the program, because you like, or should

I say love, the program. Then please do that. And also use this time to write down questions for Angelo Valli on The Tabernacle.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away.

We're going to be right back with Angelo Valli and our discussion on The Tabernacle right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Before we return to Angelo Valley and our discussion on the Tabernacle and also my guest co -host,

Dr. Jeff Waddington, as we all discuss what

Christians can learn from the Tabernacle, we just have a few announcements to make before we return to that discussion.

This coming Thursday, I am going to be manning an exhibitor's booth in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, for the

Vodie Baucom Conference. And I hope that if you have never heard

Dr. Baucom, that you discover and you begin to benefit from his ministry on Sermon Audio, on YouTube, and everywhere else you can find

Dr. Baucom's preaching and teaching. In fact, you can order books by Vodie Baucom from CVBBS .com,

another one of our advertisers, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. They have quite a number of books in stock by Dr.

Baucom. Well, anyway, I am going to be manning an

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor's booth this Thursday from 8 a .m. to 12 noon in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania.

And the theme is critical race theory. He is going to be exposing and refuting and equipping us to warn others against critical race theory, one of the most serious heresies that has crept into not only leftist apostate churches, but even formerly very biblically orthodox churches, very reformed churches.

It has just been amazing and a tragedy to see how this has crept into formerly conservative and biblically based denominations, let alone congregations.

So, guess what, folks? The good news is Dr. Baucom will be speaking on that issue in Pennsylvania, in Mifflinburg, this

Thursday, 8 a .m. to 12 noon. And the bad news is there are only four tickets left. So, if you want one of them, or four of them,

I would jump on that immediately because I am sure by tomorrow they are going to be gone.

And I want to thank the New American Standard Bible for sponsoring my exhibitor's booth there.

NASBible .com, NASBible .com. They have renewed their advertising contract with Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, thank

God. And I will be there manning an exhibitor's booth at this event with Votie Baucom, and I will be giving away free

New American Standard Bibles to anyone who agrees to have an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio flyer posted somewhere in their church building.

That is the key factor of getting a free Bible. So, if you want to find out more information about the

Votie Baucom conference, you can email me at chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and just say

Votie Baucom in the subject line, and I will get to you all the information that you need on this conference.

But as I said, there are only four tickets left, so you better do it quickly if you are interested. Also, by way of special announcements, our co -host on the program today,

Dr. Jeffrey Waddington, the pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Falling Grove, Pennsylvania, will be returning to his

Romans series on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on Monday, the 8th of February.

So, make a note for that, so that you can hear us resume that series that was interrupted by the holidays and other providential circumstances that arose.

But we are going to be, God willing, back in the swing of things with the Romans series.

So, I hope that you tune in. Last but not least, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves,

I'm urging you, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now.

You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card. By doing that, if you prefer snail mail and mailing in a check the old -fashioned way, you can mail a check made out to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to the address, the physical address that appears on your screen, when you click support at ironsharpensironradio .com.

You can also advertise with us, as long as whatever it is you're promoting, a special event, a business, a church, a parachurch organization, whatever it is you're promoting, as long as it's compatible with what we believe here,

I would love to help you launch an ad campaign. You don't have to believe it identically with me. In fact, my two guests, who are

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Also, folks, if you are not a member of a Bible -believing church, I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet

Earth that may be able to help you find a church, no matter where on the globe you live, that may be even right around the corner from you.

I've helped people find churches that were minutes away from their houses, that they didn't even know existed in all parts of the globe.

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Whatever the situation is in your life where you need a church, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put, I need a church in the subject line. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address to send in a question for Pastor Angelo Valley.

And the email address, again, is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

We do have a listener who, if I'm not mistaken, is a first -time questioner. Mitchell from Prineville, Oregon, and, sorry if I'm mispronouncing

Prineville, but that's the way it looks like it's pronounced. And Mitchell asks,

Grace and peace be to you and your guests. My question is, what are the implications of Jesus' different IM statements in the

Gospel of John as they pertain to the tabernacle? Angelo?

I have no idea. Next question.

The IM statements are really important as they're connecting back to God's own self -declaration of himself,

Exodus 3, We're supposed to see those kinds of links into the divinity of Christ, which is, of course,

John's function. And so, with John beginning his book, highlighting the uniqueness of Christ as the

Wereboom Deity, the Word of God, this identity of this tabernacle, living, breathing, walking in our midst, identifies the uniqueness of the ministry of Christ and being greater than everything the

Old Testament tabernacle was. So I think I would look to the IM statements as a further revelation, both of God's care, love, reconciliation, and transformation of his people towards himself.

I think that would be kind of the main way to look at that. Although I've not really ever thought of that link, the

IMs with that tabernacle function. Well, thanks, Mitchell. And guess what?

Since you're a first -time questioner, you have won a free New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

New American Standard, at nasbible .com. So please give us your full mailing address there in Oregon, Prineville, Oregon, if that's how you pronounce it.

And cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, will ship that Bible out to you.

Thanks again, Mitchell, for asking such an excellent question. And we have a very loyal listener and a very generous supporter financially of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Grady, in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Greetings, brothers. I don't know if I missed this, because I wasn't able to hear the beginning of the show.

Doesn't the writer of the book of Hebrews show the importance of the tabernacle to the

Christian? Yes, we did address that, Grady. But do you have anything to add to that,

Angelo? In fact, even Dr. Waddington, if you'd like to add your own two cents, if you have anything further to say.

I don't have much more to add to that. I'll just review since he had missed that formal portion. I think

Hebrews goes out of its way to identify explicitly how some portions of the tabernacle point to the coming of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and in such a way is exemplary for us to guide our own approach to not only the tabernacle, but the

Old Testament as a whole. Okay, well, now going back to why this is important for the

Christian, there is a lot of imagery in the

Bible, from the Hebrew Scriptures, and even specifically in the texts that involve the tabernacle, that are a picture of things that would be fulfilled in Christ.

And what can you tell us about those things that you are certain are biblical images about the tabernacle, biblical phrases from the

Hebrew Scriptures that refer to the tabernacle and all that went on there, that we could apply to New Testament truths.

I mean, there is, unfortunately, eisegesis that goes on, sometimes in the name of Christianity, where you have folks coming up with crazy, newfangled ideas that were never believed or taught in history, where they will take some imagery from the

Old Testament and apply to it an allegory for us today that has no basis in truth.

But there are things that we should never let slip by us, things like the anointing of oil, and we could go on and on with specific pictures that we see that have very real

New Testament truths in them that have been fulfilled in Christ. So if you could tell us about some of those.

Angelo. Sure. One of the things I really love about the tabernacle is it's visual, right?

It's pictorial. It's not just, you know, what is justification? Can I have a justification with my cereal this morning?

What does that even mean? You have an idea, you have a concept. When you're looking at the tabernacle in particular, you have something that is tangible, sensible for the people, and it was sensible for them, for the world of the

Hebrews there and then. I think one of the things we need to recognize is the image of heaven on earth that's being displayed in the tabernacle itself.

So even thinking about the people of Israel, right? They're physically surrounding this tabernacle structure as they're in the wilderness.

And so we might think of a donut, and the donut hole is where the tabernacle was relative to the people of God, that the people of God surrounded it.

It was a visible demonstration that God exists in the heart and center of His people. We might think about the covering, which is rather ordinary, but made it clear that when you entered into its spaces, you were doing something wholly different and other.

We could think of the visible beauty of the tent at the center of the court, which is an image of heaven on earth, and we see that with the various colors and materials, even the pictures of the cherubim or the angels and things like that.

And so there's all these sensible realities that are meant to remind us of the glory and the weightiness of God and also what

He's doing for His people in their midst. Now, for the sake of time, we can't go through the various elements.

Our church is doing about a 20 -week series through the various elements of the tabernacle. But some of them are easier to figure out than others.

One of the dangers that I think you've highlighted so well already is that when we come to these portions of the

Scriptures, we might have a tendency to over -allegorize. Now, again, symbolism is different than allegory, right?

Symbolism, we have a one -to -one. This means that. It's kind of very clear. But the allegorical reality that this means thatness is arbitrary.

It's subjective. It has no footing, no grounding. And sadly, throughout much of the history of interpretation, the tabernacle has had that, whether we want to see

Philo, the ancient Jewish character who leads himself in that way, or even Christian characters like Clement of Alexandria.

Think of the medieval period and Ammonites, or even the Venerable Bede. Christians and Jews alike have kind of spiritualized much of this.

But I like Calvin's wisdom. And he points out, and this is from his commentary on the

Exodus, he writes, Although no part were without a mystical meaning, which no one in his senses will admit, it is better to confess our ignorance than to indulge ourselves in frivolous conjectures.

Of this sobriety, too, the author of the Epistle of Hebrews is a fit master for us, who, although he professively shows the analogy between the shadows of the law and the truth manifested in Christ, yet sparingly touches upon some main points, and by this moderation restrains us from too curious disquisitions and deep speculation.

In other words, be content that you are a creature. Don't overdo it.

It's a normal danger. That's right. All of that in Calvin. How do you say it?

Be content. Recognize you're not as smart as you think you are. You're not as clever as you think you are. If you're the first person to notice this amazing allegory mystery, it's probably because it's not real, and it's not there, and you should probably be quiet.

And, of course, there would be enough for probably a week's worth of programs for us to follow up on what

I'm about to say. But there is a tension there, though, that if we are going to be truly

Berean, we cannot rule out learning something that has never been taught or that we're not aware was taught in history.

But we have to be very, extremely cautious about that. Would you agree with that?

I mean, it seems a bit stifling to insist that we must only see things that have absolutely been recorded by those who have lived before us on this

Earth, but at the same time not be seeking some kind of notoriety in having a

Gnostic understanding of things that nobody else has seen and has known before.

And it shows a lack of wisdom if we immediately, and also it shows extreme pride for us to immediately start declaring things as gospel truth that have never been seen before.

Am I making sense here? Yeah, I think there's a healthy tension. Go ahead, brother.

I think you're right. That tension that you're talking about,

Angelo, the healthy tension, it does relate to the difference between allegory and what we call typology.

Typology is woven into the warp and woof of Scripture.

And typology, of course, is the person or institution or event in the

Old Testament that points forward to something in the New Testament, in particular the person and work of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And in between that culminating fulfillment, there may be many fulfillments in later portions of the

Old Testament. So that's a typology that is actually built into the history of God's Word and into the history of redemption by God Himself.

There's an objective basis for it. Allegory is typically where someone, as Calvin hints at in that citation that Angelo read for, that the allegory is usually detached from the history of redemption.

In other words, it's not tied down to what God has revealed to us, but it's taking a word or some aspect of the

Old Testament, in particular the tabernacle specifically in this instance, something that doesn't necessarily have an abiding significance in creating it out of thin air.

Now, as you say, Chris, you can't assume that there is no new light to break forth from God's Word to allude to a remark made many years ago by a theologian.

But we want to be careful so that if we come up with some reading that, as far as we know, has not been advocated by someone who we respect in the history of the

Church, then it's quite possible that it's not right.

And you actually already said that, Chris. You said you have to be, as a mature believer, seeing the connections.

Let's talk about it that way. Typology is seeing the connections between the Old Testament and the

New in particular, and many times between the earlier portion of the

Old Testament and the later portion. The tabernacle, of course, lends itself to potential abuse, but there really is no way to safeguard— there's no way, apart from the wisdom granted to us by the

Holy Spirit as we read God's Word, there's no way to say in advance that this or that isn't a legitimate reading until you think through the issue, until you give it thought.

And if nobody else has ever advocated a position that you believe is correct, then what you need to do is take your time, think about the issue, and pray about it, and ask the

Lord to give you wisdom, and ask the Lord to warn you off the idea if you discover that you can't find someone who has advocated with you before.

The tabernacle—and Angelo has touched upon this already— in the

Israelite encampment, the tabernacle was in the center of the camp.

The tabernacle was protected on all four sides by the tents of the tribes.

Four tribes, I believe, on each side of the tabernacle were protected.

But the point of the tabernacle was so that a holy God could meet with the sinful people.

Holy God could meet with the sinful people. And that's the tabernacle where that is made possible by God's grace.

He didn't have to do it, but he has the desire, as he says frequently,

I will be your God and you will be my people. And there has to be a way to achieve that, given the problem of sin.

And that's where the tabernacle comes in, and all of the various details that we consider.

You want to keep that big picture in the back of your mind, that God is enabling us to come into his presence without fear of destruction.

And of course, there's more to say, and Angelo can fill in some of the details

In fact, we're going to go to our final break, which is going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks. But what

I'd like you to do, you could pick up where Dr. Waddington left off there, Angelo, but I'd also at least get an overview from you on some of the ways the tabernacle points to the most crucial doctrines of Christianity, specifically soteriology, like forensic justification, how we cannot merit our entrance into heaven by our own righteousness.

We need to be clothed with the righteousness of another, Jesus Christ. And other things like that, that we can see the tabernacle and all of the rites being partaken of there as pointing to very important, vital

Christian truths, perhaps even truths that separate historic

Protestant, Reformed Christianity from Rome and every other expression of Christendom.

But anyway, we're going to our final break right now, so if you want to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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The Genealogies, with your minimum donation of $35. We are now back, and we have on the line

Angelo Valley, who is the pastor of Christ Reformed Church of Alexandria, Pennsylvania, and we also have

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington as my co -host, and we are talking about the tabernacle and its significance for the church today.

If you could, Angelo, pick up where I asked about specific themes that are important, that are vital in the

Christian faith, like the imputed righteousness of Christ, etc., that we can see in the tabernacle.

Sure. So some of the easy places would be to look at the brazen altar and how it is an essential portion of the reconciliation of the people of God.

Every morning and evening, an offering was made and required from the people of God. But I think a more interesting place would be the consecration or ordination of the priests.

If you look at Exodus 29, 1 -37, or Leviticus 8, you can see a parallel there, we find something really interesting.

We look at the priesthood of Aaron and his children, or his sons at this point, and it's fascinating, because as I was wrestling through it and trying to understand the event,

I found its significance, surprisingly enough, paralleled analogously with the significance of Baptists.

And I mean that in the sense that when we look at these men who are called to this sacred ministry in the

Old Testament, we find that they need to be washed in water, they need to be robed in righteousness, they need to be anointed with oil, as well as sprinkled with blood.

And so, it was fascinating in seeing how these men who were preparing to meet with God themselves were insufficient on their own.

They needed this priestly process and guard that God had set apart for His people.

And its significance, again, was, I think, points forward to the significance of Baptism.

We have the parallel of their washing at the bronze laver with the washing of regeneration.

We think of that in Titus 3 .5, or even Ezekiel 36 .25, in the promise of the New Covenant that God will sprinkle

His people with water. Again, that's why we Presbyterians are all about sprinkling.

Another example is putting on Christ and all of His benefits. You know, we speak of putting on Christ.

You have the example in the prophets, especially in Isaiah, being robed in righteousness. We might think of Joshua the

High Priest in Zechariah 3, but also Galatians 3 .27, we put on Christ and His benefits.

It's no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us as well. But the third one, this anointing angle we see is special for the

High Priest. He alone is anointed on the face. But the ordinary priests are also sprinkled with the oil, and this is a symbol of the

Holy Spirit coming upon them. The work they're about to proceed in doing is just beyond their ability.

It needs supernatural aid and strength. As my brother, Dr. Waddington, was talking, when we read the

Scriptures, we need the aid of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost Himself is symbolized in the oil. We might think of 2

Corinthians 1, 21 and 22. And then lastly, again, to go back to that sprinkling, we see that we are sprinkled with the blood of Christ.

They were sprinkled with the blood of their sacrifices. This whole event was a seven -day ordeal. And so, again,

I know we're going rather quickly through that, but this unique angle of seeing the significance of the priesthood parallel with the priesthood of all believers,

I think, is a place where we can come to the tabernacle and see it not only as Hebrew Scripture, but as Christian Scripture.

And I mean that in the sense that it's not just a useful task in seeing what was done there and then, but how there and then applies today and is made beneficial for the people of God today.

Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Do you have anything further to ask of Angelo, Jeff?

Well, I was trying to think. There's a lot of details that we have to forego in talking about the significance of the tabernacle, which clearly we've already seen that the sacrificial system is key to the worship in the tabernacle and then later in the temple, that people cannot come into God's presence, not even the priests and not even the high priests can come into God's presence without a personal sacrifice of personal sins and then also the sacrifice for the nation, their sins.

And in addition to the sacrifices that individual Hebrews would have to make coming in to offer worship at the tabernacle and temple, there's a lot more that could be said, but I think going back to what

I said earlier, the tabernacle is the place where a holy God meets with a sinful people and that reaches its fulfillment in, of course, the person and work of the

Lord Jesus Christ. He is, as he said in John chapter 2, he is the temple.

He is the replacement so that when Christ came, when he accomplished redemption for us by his death on the cross and when he was raised and ascended and now ministers in the heavenly tabernacle, we haven't really talked much about that, but we learn about Hebrews, that the tabernacle of the

Old Testament now becomes outdated because it's reached its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

We now don't have to go to a tent of meeting and slaughter animals or if we're a priest put on, or the high priest put on these vestments, ornate vestments, and be anointed with oil and be sprinkled with blood, go through the washing process, etc.

We may come directly into the presence of God to the throne of grace because we come with the

Lord Jesus Christ who is our faithful high priest. We have a high priest who lives forever.

We don't depend upon a high priest who is subject to death like the rest of us.

Jesus is sinless, holy, harmless, and undefiled, as it says in the book of Hebrews, and his sacrifice is once for all.

That tells us that all that we read in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, Leviticus, and other places, is pointing forward to help us to understand the significance of Christ's person and work.

His death on the cross has fulfilled the Old Testament sacrificial system.

And Angela, we have about two minutes or 90 seconds for you to basically summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

I guess if we had to go from a more broad approach, it would be to dare to read the whole

Bible. Dare to believe that all of it is indeed for your benefit and good. Take that glorious reality that we celebrate the inherency of Scripture, its authoritative, inspirational character, and not just limit it to the portions that we're familiar with.

Read those portions of the Bible that are difficult or foreign to us. And even if we find them boring, perhaps, that might be an invitation for us to slow down and consider what

God is saying, because all of it is given by God, not the product of men who got bored someday in the ancient

Near East, but were moved by the Holy Spirit so that we might have God's special revelation.

It's for our good. So, first, that, and then secondarily, to be patient and slow as you read the

Bible, and to be content to listen to good Christian teachers, good theologians you trust, and to grow in your love and affection for understanding and valuing the

Old Testament as a whole. And to that, I would point to people like Meredith Klein or Gerhardus Voss.

Those would be great places to go hang out and sit. Yes, Meredith Klein and Lorraine Bettner are my two favorite female theologians.

Sorry, I have to throw that in there every time I hear one of their names. I want to make sure that our listeners know exactly where they can get a hold of both of you.

Once again, Christ Reformed Church of Alexandria, Virginia, has a website, CRC. No, no, no, no, no.

Alexandria, Pennsylvania. Oh, I'm sorry. I think I said it right every other time though, right? We'll find out in years to come.

CRCAlexandria .org. That's Christ Reformed Church in Alexandria, Pennsylvania. Sorry for the slip of the tongue there.

Oh, it's all good. And Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Thorn Grove, Pennsylvania can be found at FaithOPC .net.

FaithOPC .net. I want to thank both of you for being my guests today. If you could hold on the line,

I want to give you a proper goodbye when we go off the air. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.