Have you ever had the fun of designing a favorite  room for yourself? Maybe as a child you got to choose new paint color and a new bedspread for your bedroom. As an adult maybe you got to set up your first home with your spouse and it was so cool to dream about it together.

In Exodus 25-28 God showed Moses his dream for the tabernacle, the place where he was going to dwell, right in the middle of Israel. They had forty days and nights together at the summit of Mt. Sinai. We don’t know what Moses expected to hear from God during that time, but when he came back it was with the plans for the tabernacle.

I am very thankful for Nahum M. Sarna’s book, Exploring Exodus, and much of what I will share here today is drawn from his excellent scholarship and extensive Bible knowledge.

A Portable Place of Worship

The tabernacle God described to Moses was a portable place of worship. Unlike an idol, God is omnipresent and can’t be confined to a particular place. He sanctifies places by his presence and when he travels, his holiness goes with him. Israel was free to keep moving toward Canaan because everywhere God sent the tabernacle, he went with it, and Israel could worship and hear from him.

God Reveals Himself

When God revealed himself to people in the Old Testament, it was called a theophany.  He let people see his glory and hear his voice. Sometimes there were disturbances in nature like earthquakes and storms. Sometimes loud trumpets blasted, other times he came quietly and whispered.

We don’t know how God sounded to Moses during their forty days together on the mountain, but Moses remembered everything God said when he came back down. God wanted a place to dwell in Israel and he had given Moses the plan. For the first time in history, God was going to have a house on earth.

When King Solomon later replaced the portable tabernacle with a permanent temple in Jerusalem he asked:

“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! 1 Kings 8:27

The tabernacle and everything in it was going to be sacred, but only as long as God chose to appear there. The  tabernacle provided people with a place to gather and worship God, but he was never confined to it. God chooses where to bring his holy presence and no one can cause a theophany merely by building a place for it.

Mt. Sinai and the Tabernacle

The tabernacle was designed to be a living extension of Israel’s meeting with God at Mt. Sinai. God designated three holy zones on the mountain, and the tabernacle had three distinct zones in its design.

At Sinai the base of the mountain was for lay people. Because the people were tainted with sin, Moses built the altar of sacrifice there at the foot of the mountain and they were not allowed to go past it to touch any part of the mountain.

The plan for the tabernacle also included a place for lay people. It was a courtyard in front of the tabernacle where the altar of sacrifice stood. Anyone could enter the courtyard to offer sacrifices for their sins, but they were not allowed to enter the tabernacle itself.

Part way up Mt. Sinai was a zone of holiness that only the priests and elders were permitted to enter. That is where they went to see God on his throne in Exodus 24:9-11, and “They saw God, and they ate and drank.” 

This corresponded to the holy place inside the tabernacle where priests served God with bread on the table, incense on the incense altar and the golden lamp stand that perpetually burned with pure olive oil. Only certain priests were allowed to come that far into the tabernacle.

The summit of Mt. Sinai was the holiest of the three zones and only Moses was permitted to enter there. He met with God and brought back his instructions to the people of Israel.

In the tabernacle the innermost room represented the summit of the mountain. It was called the Holy of Holies and only the high priest could go there. He entered only once a year on Yom Kippur, after completing purification rituals and sacrifices for his sins. Like Moses, the high priest returned from the Holy of Holies with messages from God for Israel.

Inside the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant with golden cherubim overshadowing its pure gold cover. When God spoke in the Holy of Holies his voice came from above the cherubim. It was the same on Mt. Sinai when God spoke to Moses.

Precious Metals and the Holiness of God

Moses collected three precious metals for the construction of the tabernacle. The least precious was bronze and it was used in the courtyard and its perimeter. Just as the people who came to make sacrifices were tainted with sin, so bronze was not a pure metal. Its copper was alloyed with tin making it a useful, but less precious metal.

The entry room to the tabernacle had pure silver in its construction, and the Holy of Holies was embellished with the purest gold. The closer one got to God’s presence inside the tabernacle, the higher the value and purer the quality of the precious metals.

All of Israel Helped

All of Israel came out to help when it was time to build the tabernacle. They brought donations of precious metals, gems, animal hides, purple, blue and scarlet thread, and fine linen. They probably gave from the plunder they brought out of Egypt. Weavers, embroiderers, seamstresses, metal smiths, carpenters and jewelers all brought their skills to the work. God wanted his family to be invested in the place where he would dwell.

Soon we will see in our reading that God also wanted them to live in his neighborhood. When God later organized the Israelite camp, the twelve tribes were arranged facing the four sides of the tabernacle courtyard. Between the lay people and the courtyard were the tents of the priests with their families.

The focal point of life in Israel was the presence of God in the tabernacle. The people were constantly reminded about how to live holy lives before God.

The Priests

The priests all came from the tribe of Levi and they were responsible for all of the work of the tabernacle and all of its parts. One branch, the Kohathites, ministered inside the tabernacle; God selected his high priest from among them each year.

The high priest wore an ephod, a kind of front bib over his blue tunic, with a breastplate containing gems that represented the twelve tribes of Israel. His head was covered by a turban with a gold plate on it that read “Holy to the Lord.” When the high priest entered the Holy of Holies each year he carried God’s treasured possession, the tribes of Israel, on the breastplate over his heart.

All of the priests were held to the highest standard of personal holiness. They had to be ceremonially pure and clothed in clean linen garments whenever they served.

God and His Word

In the holiest place, inside the Ark, were the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments. Pagan temples had carved images of their gods in the central place of worship, but Israel had the Word of God. No one could come close to God without encountering his Word.

Before Israel there were other nations with kings who wrote words they considered eternal and divine. The record of those words even included curses on anyone who altered what they had written. We know this because fragments of these laws have been discovered . . . broken and scattered fragments of “eternal and divine” words written by ancient kings.

But God has preserved the Bible. As it says in Psalm 119:80-91:

“Your word, Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens. Your faithfulness continues through all generations; you established the earth, and it endures. Your laws endure to this day, for all things serve you.”

The story of the Bible and how it has been preserved throughout the ages is the subject of countless books, but the Apostle Peter summed it up best when he quoted Isaiah 40:6-8, and then added his own postscript.

“’All men are like the grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.’ And this is the word that was preached to you.” 1 Peter 1:24-25

The Word of the Lord stands forever. Amen.