I have always been amused that churches, including the great Metropolitan Tabernacle in London once pastored by Charles Spurgeon, choose to use the term "tabernacle" in their names. While there is nothing wrong in using such a name, the term in the Bible signified a movable structure of light construction, making them very different from modern permanent church structures. Nonetheless, it should be acknowledged that the tabernacle was for a time a central place for worship and the special presence of God that also has a typological connection to the coming of Christ. In those senses, the use of the term suggests important imagery.
Nearly all of the last 15 chapters of the Book of Exodus is devoted to instructions regarding the building of the temple, its furnishings, and the garb of the priests that would perform functions within it and the actual construction. That the two sections of instructive material and the actual construction are broken up by chapters dealing with Israel's sin of worshipping a golden calf is no accident. As with other temple activity we looked at through Genesis, which was always associated with covenant making, the building of the tabernacle is associated with God's confirmation of his covenant with Israel through Moses in Exodus 24. Thus, the insertion of the golden calf story makes poignant God's determination through the tabernacle to continue to uphold his covenant with Israel in the face of their early breach. God would continue to dwell among them and lead them.
As we have discussed before, the temple theme of God's special presence among his people that works its way through all of Scripture helps explain the extraordinary amount of attention given to it. Just as many Christians struggle to find importance in the Bible's extensive genealogies, which among other things demonstrate the important point that Christianity claims to be a revealed religion based on God's dealings with man in human history (as opposed to a philosophically developed ideology apart from historical context), many also struggle to make it through these lengthy construction program descriptions. After all, the account of the building of the tabernacle takes up nearly as much space as the entire description of how the Israelites got from Egypt to Mount Sinai, and lengthy descriptions will be found again when it comes to the planning and construction of Solomon's temple, the building of the second temple, and the description of Ezekiel's end times temple. While these can be challenging sections to read for many of us, it needs to be noted that these are passages moving forward an important biblical theme that ultimately finds its way into typological fulfillment in Jesus Christ, as well as in the church found in the New Testament. Thus, as said before, these temple building episodes carry forward a story with important New Testament significance.
Without going further into all of the details of tabernacle construction -- something which I would nonetheless encourage you to look at -- I would like to illustrate how this is true. Many Christians have not seen modelled solid teaching that molds together the New and Old Testaments (what did Jesus mean when he told the Pharisees that if they really knew the Scripture that they would know it was about him?), but the things that we have been studying find their way into the New Testament understanding of the Christ event. Exodus concludes with the completion of the tabernacle, with an emphasis in the closing verses of Moses beholding the glory of God when the work is finalized. This provides a good time for us to pause and note that just as Genesis began with the building of a temple and includes stories of the building of altars. Exodus closes with the completion of the tabernacle. Thus, this is an enormous and often under appreciated theme of the first two books of the Bible.
At least that is the way the Apostle John sees it when he opens his Gospel. In John 1:1, the apostle mirrors the language of Genesis 1 (In the beginning...). Genesis 1 emphasizes God's speech by which all was created. John 1 speaks of God's Word, who is also viewed as the agent of creation, and which is seen as also both God and being with God. This is an important Trinitarian text, with the Word being the second person of the Trinity present at creation. In making this connection, John is also connecting the creation of Genesis 1 with the new creation that comes through Jesus Christ.
While John does not explicitly talk about a temple theme with his Genesis 1 language, it does not take him long to get there. In verse 18, John says that the Word "became flesh and dwelt among us." The word translated "dwelt" is not the usual one that we might have expected, and it has the idea of pitching a tent, thus suggesting a tabernacle theme associated with the coming of Jesus into the world. Just in case we would miss it otherwise, John's next phrase makes clear what he has in mind: "and we beheld his glory...." John's language intentionally conveys language from Exodus 40, where Moses finishes the work of the tabernacle and beholds the glory of God. John's message is clear: the special presence of God once associated with the tabernacle -- and later associated with the temple -- is now manifested in the personal presence of Jesus Christ. Of note, near the end of John 1, Jesus himself extends this claim in his conversation with Nathaniel, as Jesus associates himself with Jacob's dream of a ladder descending from heaven, an event that had resulted in Jacob building an altar.
While there is much more that could be said about the building of the tabernacle and other matters in the Pentateuch, with the next post I intend to move the study forward. We will begin to look at the work of David and Solomon in building the temple at Jerusalem.
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