LECTURES ON THE TABERNACLE
LECTURE I
WITH WHOM
DOES GOD DWELL?
Read Exod.12:12,13; 13:1,2; 14:21,22; 16:16-18;
20:1-3; 33:12-14; 35:1-3.
IT is always instructive in taking up any
subject in Scripture to see its connection. We will, therefore, if the Lord
enable, do this in connection with that which speaks of His dwelling-place
among men. The Tabernacle was, we might say, the centre of His manifestation to
His earthly people, Israel. About it their camp in the wilderness was grouped,
and in connection with it their journeys were taken. When they reached the
Land, there too God's order was established in connection with it. We will
therefore glance at the condition of the people when God gave them the
Tabernacle.
If this is important in looking at the literal history of
Israel, how much more so is it when we remember of whom and of what it was a
type for all time. Let us then take up these seven scriptures, which recall to
our minds the seven great facts there set forth.
God loves to dwell,
and can only dwell, amidst the praises of His people. He can only abide where
He is known; and He can only be known on the ground of redemption. In the first
chapter of Romans, we see that those who had the witness of "His eternal power
and Godhead" in His works of creation, which were all about them, were blinded
and darkened in their minds. Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools, and ended by being engulfed in all manner of idolatry and abominable
lusts.
If we are to know God, it must be on the basis of His own
revelation, according to His nature, which is true and righteous. Therefore in
dealing with sinful, guilty man, He must reveal Himself as supremely righteous
and holy - a God of justice, whatever else He may have to say. Blessed be His
holy name, He has more than that to say, for that could only condemn us to
perpetual banishment from Himself, in the outer darkness. That forms the dark
background upon which shines out in all its lustre the mercy of God as revealed
in Christ Jesus, His person and His work. That is suggested in the passages we
have referred to.
i. The first scripture (Ex. 12: 12, 13)
reminds us that His people have been sheltered from a justly-deserved judgment.
God can only dwell in the midst of a sheltered people. Otherwise they are yet
under judgment in common with all the rest of mankind, just as Israel was under
judgment in common with all the people of Egypt, until God provided the lamb
and directed that its blood should be sprinkled upon the lintels and door-posts
of their habitations.
How all this speaks of Him who is the "Lamb
without blemish and without spot" (1 Pet. 2: 19), who was "made sin" upon the
cross, that He might provide a shelter for the guilty! How His saints love to
dwell upon it! Had God's long-suffering terminated in judgment, there would be
nothing but the blackness of darkness forever. But in His love He provided a
perfect shelter from all the wrath and judgment deserved, even while they were
in Egypt, the place of servitude to sin. God does not ask the sinner first to
take a single step in His ways, but takes him where and as he is, and provides
a perfect shelter through the precious blood of Christ.
When that
precious blood has been appropriated by faith (the tiny hyssop, with which it
was applied to their dwellings, Ex. 12: 22, speaks of true self-judgment before
God, the confession of guilt and unworthiness), God's declaration is: "When I
see the blood, I will pass over you." We have His provision in the blood of
Christ, and His assurance in His own word that those who are sheltered by that
blood are forever delivered from judgment to come. His people are not looking
forward to some time in the future for salvation, or waiting for something to
be done in themselves before they can have settled peace with God, but they can
say they have accepted the shelter which God has provided. "The blood shall be
to you for a token upon the houses where ye are, and when I see the blood I
will pass over you."
The Second Scripture 2. Having seen that
believers are a sheltered people, the next scripture (Ex. 13: i, 2) shows them
to us as a purchased people. When judgment stalked through the land of Egypt,
Israel was safely sheltered by a God-given protection, and the very blood that
sheltered was also the purchase-price for them. "Sanctify unto Me all the
first-born." Or, as we have it in the New Testament, "Ye are not your own, for
ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body" (i Cor. 6: 20).
Thank God, His people are not only set free from judgment and the fear of
wrath, but they have been purchased out from Satan's servitude and from sin.
Best of all, they are not their own masters. Paul delighted to style himself
ever, "The bond-servant of Jesus Christ." It was a badge of the highest honour
to be Christ's purchase. We are a company of servants, and can glory in a
bondage which is complete liberty, to be absolutely for God, the purchase of
His perfect love, by the most precious blood of Christ. The value which God
sets upon us is seen in the price paid. God looks upon us and says, as it were,
"These are My people." Look at a poor, wretched sinner who has received Christ.
Such an one is of but little worth in the world's estimation, but God
declares:
"He is precious in My sight, the purchase of the blood of Mine
own Son."
3. The third scripture (Ex. 14: 21, 22) speaks of a
different line of truth. The first two scriptures spoke of what was true for
Israel even in Egypt - just as the Good Samaritan came to the place where the
robbed and wounded man lay, and there poured in the healing oil and wine, God
came down to His people in Egypt, but He did not leave them there. The word
that told them of safety, and that they were His, gave them marching orders
also to leave the place of their servitude. They are to go forth servants to
God, but free from all else. Not only was Israel free from the bondage of
Pharaoh, but from the very place where he had held them. This world, for the
believer, is no longer Egypt but the wilderness, a place of pilgrimage, and the
inheritance that attracts him is "the glory of all lands"- the "land flowing
with milk and honey." So the third great fact is that the Lord's people through
Christ's death and resurrection. He has gone out of this world where sin reigns
(though it never had the slightest power over Him), and by His death has opened
the only way for His own. They are risen with Him, as they have also died with
Him. They are therefore at liberty to reckon themselves "dead indeed unto sin,
and alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6: ii). Here is where
triumph begins; the one who had been groaning under fear of bondage can take up
the song of triumph: "Sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the
horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea" .
Those who know this
practically are a people who are now in the wilderness, pilgrims whose faces
are not set backward to what is behind but forward toward the inheritance - the
mount of God, where He will reveal all the treasures of His love stored up for
us in Christ in glory. Only to such a people, delivered from trifling with sin
and the world, can God reveal the further truths of His word. May He give us
true exercise as to these things. This brings us to the fourth scripture (Ex.
i6: i6-x8), which tells us of God's provision for His people in the wilderness
- the Manna from heaven and the water out of the Rock. Bread was given them,
and their water was sure. The wilderness is a dry and thirsty land, with
nothing in it naturally to sustain, and yet God brought that mighty host
through the desert for forty years, to His inheritance; and at the close, He
could ask them whether they had lacked anything. Their garments had not waxed
old; their feet had not swelled (Deut. 8: 4). God was, and ever is, as good as
His word.
Fourth Scripture 4. It is Christ who is the
food of His people, and the Spirit of God flowing through the smitten Rock-"
that Rock was Christ" (i Cor. 10: 4)- supplying refreshment from the word of
God to sustain us. Christ is not known by the world, but He is the "Bread of
God who came down from heaven," humbled even unto death, to be the food of His
people day by day according to their need - Bread of the mighty that will carry
them as victors through the wilderness and bring them fresh to the end of their
journey.
Fifth Scripture 5. We pass next to that at which we
must look somewhat carefully, the truth embodied in our fifth scripture, Ex.
20: 1-3. The people are at Mount Sinai, where God is to manifest Himself in His
awful majesty and holiness. None are permitted even to touch the mount. He was
about to give the law, His requirement from man, and the solemn fact is
emphasized that man could not meet that requirement. In the first four
commandments we have the claims of law in relation to God, and in the last six
those claims in relation to man. This has been summarized, as our Lord quoted
it: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as
thyself" (Luke io: 27). If such a demand as that is made upon fallen man, he
can no more meet it than create a world.
Thus, so far from giving life,
the law can only give death. So far from drawing man into the presence of God,
it can only place barriers around the inaccessible mount of His glory and
holiness. "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight,
for by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3 20).
There are two
exercises produced by the law, answering to the provision of grace made in the
Passover and the Red Sea. First, as a ground of justification, it shows man his
utter guilt and unfitness for God. You will search the Scriptures in vain for a
single instance where the effect of the law of God upon man is anything else.
But we are sometimes told that though we are not under law as a ground of
justification, we are under it as a rule of life. It is indeed an expression of
God's perfect will for His people who are to walk according to these ten
commandments; but the fact is man can no more keep the law as a rule of life
than as a means of justification. The law only gives the knowledge of sin in
us. Let us remember that remarkable passage, "The strength of sin is the law"
(i Cor. 10: 56)-it binds the guilt of sin upon the conscience.
What is
the secret of the struggle of the 7th of Romans? It is a child of God seeking
holiness by the law as a rule of life. But he finds that what was ordained to
life only works death in him; that which was "holy, just and good" only
produced condemnation in him, and the prohibition but stirred unconquerable
desire to do the very thing forbidden. Whenever you see a man seeking to keep
the law as God's demand upon him, you will find him guilty and wretched; or,
what is worse, self-righteous and self-deceived. If he is a child of God, he
becomes perfectly miserable, crying out, "Oh wretched man that I am!" That
being the case, wherefore serveth the law? God's answer is that it shuts up man
to the perfect redemption through Christ, both from the guilt and the power of
sin. The law has done its holy work when it has taught the solemn
heart-searching truth:
"In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good
thing" (Rom. 8: i8). When it has done this, it points the way to Christ. "The
law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from the law of
sin and death" (Rom. 8: 2).
But these great facts being settled, we can
see the law as suggesting another great truth. Peter, writing in his first
epistle to a pilgrim people who would miswer very much to Israel as they passed
through the wilderness, addresses them as, "Elect according to the
foreknowledge of God.the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto
obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (i Pet, 1 2). They were
not only an elect and regenerate people, sheltered by the sprinkled blood, but
they were marked for practical obedience. We might say the precious blood has
been sprinkled not only upon the door for shelter, but upon the path of God's
redeemed people, to secure their walk for Him.
How blessed is the
thought that our whole pathway is a blood-sprinkled one - that is, a way of
holiness; a redeemed way for a redeemed people (Isa. 35: 8-io). Just as really
as we are redeemed from the guilt of sin, so really are we marked for obedience
to God. And this, we may gather, was typified by the law - an obedience which
it could not produce, but which God desired for His people. This we have in the
8th of Romans: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the
flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin,
condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law (the righteous
requirements of the law) might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit" (Rom. 8:). For those who have been redeemed from it, the
law becomes the badge of the very obedience which it failed to secure. Thus our
fifth scripture reminds us that God dwells among an obedient people.
6. Our sixth scripture, Ex. 33 : 12-14, need not detain us long, though
its lesson is a precious one, based as it is upon the sad history that preceded
it. Moses was in the mount, enjoying communion with God about the Tabernacle,
of which God was showing him the pattern, and giving directions about each
detail - and the people who had but lately been promising absolute obedience,
were singing and dancing about the golden calf! You say,What a wretched people
to forget their oaths in so short a time! Ah, is the natural man anything
better in us? The flesh will turn from the glories of the person of Christ to
its golden calves! Let God leave us for a single hour, and we will dishonour
Him, even as His beloved servants, Peter, David and Hezekiah did - men of God
as they were. No confidence in the flesh! May the Holy Spirit bring it home in
the power of divine love and grace to our hearts.
But, thank God, that
is but the dark background upon which the bright lustre of divine grace shines
out all the more brightly. Moses returns to the mount to intercede for the
people. "Peradventure," he says (for it was a legal, external, conditional
covenant), "I shall make an atonement for you." He now brings back to them new
tables of stone with the same commands upon them. They were, we might say, law
tempered with mercy, for a people who were stiffnecked and prone to evil. This
glimpse of mercy, connected with an inflexible law, is not sufficient to give
life, but it causes Moses' face to shine, so that he was obliged to put a veil
upon his face, for the people could not look upon that which, as the apostle
tells us, was a "ministration of condemnation" (2 Cor. 3). But, thanks be to
God, the veil is now removed, in Christ, and we see, not a partial glory, but
the full glory of the ministry of life and righteousness shining in the face of
Jesus. This glory is suggested at least in the scripture we have been dwelling
upon; and the lesson we would gather from it is that a people who have learned
their own nothingness and have been restored on a basis of grace, are now in a
position to enjoy what God reveals to them.
Seventh Scripture
7.. This brings us to the seventh great truth, Ex. 35: 1-3, which is the
culmiflation of all the previous ones. It is the rest of God. All provisions
for preparing the Tabernacle had been made, and they were now about to enter
upon its actual construction. But notice, first, the repetition of the command
to keep the Sabbath. It points on to the rest of God. He can never rest in the
presence of sin. He would declare that His dwelling-place is to be on the basis
of an eternal Sabbath. We see this in the last part of Revelation, when the
toiling is done the glorious end is reached. All of man's day is at last over,
and we are brought into the cloudless, eternal day of God. "The Tabernacle of
oGod is with men, and He will dwell with them" (Rev. 21: 3). The rest of God
and the dwelling-place of God must be together, and that for eternity. But
coming back to time, to the basis on which God dwells with His people even now,
how preciously it reminds us of Him who is the true basis of rest - not our
work or worthiness.
It is ceasing to struggle to improve the flesh, and
in anticipation entering upon God's rest, even Christ Himself, whose glory God
spreads as a covering over His redeemed. Thus briefly we have looked at the
characteristics of the people whom God leads into the truth of His
dwelling-place. Let us repeat them. They are:
A people sheltered by the
blood of the Lamb.
A people purchased by the same precious blood.
A
people delivered from the power of sin through the death and resurrection of
Christ.
A people nourished and sustained through all their wilderness
journey.
A people sanctified unto obedience through the blood of
Christ.
A people restored from the sin and folly of departure from God.
A people who have entered into the thoughts of God's rest.
If our souls
have in someo measure been laid hold of by these truths, we shall be in a moral
condition to enjoy what God has revealed in con-nection with His dwelling-place
among His people, and to be more fully established by it in His grace.
LECTURE 2
GOD'S DWELLING - PLACE
(Exodus 25: 1-9.)
WE have here
a list of the materials which were necessary for the construction of the
Tabernacle, God's dwelling-place. It was a wonderful building, which
represented, for the time in which it was erected, and indeed for all time, the
extreme of cost and value. No expense was spared, no magnificence was wanting,
to make the dwelling-place of God as glorious and wonderful an abode as the eye
of man had ever seen, and yet a fitting accompaniment to the
wilder-ness.
Gold and silver and brass were the metals to be used. All
the shittim wood in the Tabernacle was covered with gold-boards, ark, altar of
incense, table of shewbread; while the candle-stick and mercy-seat were made
entirely of this precious metal. Silver formed the foundation of the building.
Each board securely rested in two sockets of silver, having mortises into which
the tenons of the boards entered. This gave solidity and firmness to the whole
structure.
End of this extract