Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 3.17 → restored 4.41
Use the player's Original switch to compare.How Diffio restores old speech recordings
We come now in our studies to section six of the book of Exodus that is concerned with the details given by God to Moses for the building of the tabernacle, and then for the clothing and equipment of the priests, that in that tabernacle they might exercise their ministry of priesthood and lead the nation in their service of God. From a point of view of proportions of the narrative, you will see how tremendously important this matter of the tabernacle and priesthood was to the author of the book of Exodus.
Chapters twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, and thirty one are concerned with the directions for building it. That is, if I count to right, seven long detailed chapters. And then chapters thirty five to forty inclusive, another six long chapters are concerned with the carrying out of those instructions in detail, the actual building of the tabernacle and the making of the priestly vestments and all the instruments they needed for their service. Moreover, from a point of view of the flow of the, uh, uh, thought in the book, the book comes to its tremendous goal and climax as a book, with the tabernacle built and the glory of God descending by his grace to dwell in that tabernacle.
God fulfilling his gracious promise when he told Moses to make it, that I will sanctify that place, I will glorify that place by causing my name and my glory to live. So, merely from the point of studying the literary composition of the book and following its climaxes, minor climaxes, and major climax, and its final ultimate climax, we must, of course, pay due and proportionate attention to the building and functioning of the tabernacle and priesthood.
We cannot afford, if we would be honest expositors of the book of Exodus, just to dismiss those thirteen large chapters with a cursory odd statement or two, and then pass them by as if they were irrelevant to us in our day and generation. So then, just to remind ourselves of some, uh, physical details, many people have attempted to draw accurate plans and, uh, and diagrams and pictures of the, uh, uh, uh, tabernacle.
Uh, not all, of course, agree in detail because, uh, not enough detail is given in the Old Testament narrative for us to see exactly how it was in all its details. But it was a, uh, as far as the building went, it stood in a large court, and the building was made of frames and had curtains over it spread, as I would read the Hebrew, spread in the manner that a pall is spread over a coffin, not with a high-pitched roof, as sometimes one sees it represented in some literature. Some people hold that the external cur- coverings of skin were pegged out so as to form a kind of a colonnade, eh, around the structure where the priests might, uh, perform.
In this more recent attempt by a British architect to, um, reconstruct the tabernacle, he is an enthusiast, as you may see, uh, and published this in the Royal, uh, uh, Journal of the British Institute of Architects. He is a, a, a great enthusiast. He holds, among other things, that whereas architecture students in Britain have been brought up to think that the classical temples of Greece, uh, first, uh, taught men the classical proportions that should be followed in the building of a building, and of course have had tremendous influence in Europe in architectural, uh, standards and ideals.
This man is arguing in the Journal for Architects that the proportions that are basic to good design were taught by God to Moses long before the classical people were, uh, inventing their marvelous temples and other buildings in classical Greece. But that, by the way, he, as you see, holds that the extra curtains were pegged out here. He gives the roof a little bit of pitch, I presume, so he thinks that would help the water to run off. Those things are debatable, of course, and we need not stay on them. We should perhaps notice, uh, the view that he takes, it's a view that I would take too, that the tabernacle was not composed as to its wooden structure of solid planks, but was made rather of, um, uh, open ladder-like construction.
And that is important because, for uh, uh, uh, many practical reasons, solid planks would be a colossal weight to transport across the wilderness. And then if you had solid planks, they would seem to, uh, frustrate the purpose for which the glorious tabernacle curtains were made. Technically speaking, uh, gentlemen, you may remember that, uh, tabernacle, Mishkan in Hebrew, while sometimes used to refer to the whole structure, in the narrower and exact technical sense, refers to the set of curtains that were draped over this structure, as we saw in the first picture.
Those curtains were magnificently detailed and adorned. Those ten curtains themselves formed the Mishkan. They are the Mishkan. They are the dwelling place of God. Over them went another set of curtains. They were called the ohel. They were made not of linen, but of goat's hair woven. They were there, of course, to protect the tabernacle curtains themselves. Now, these frames were there, of course, to support those curtains. And if, uh, those frames had been solid boards, when you entered the building, all you would have seen of the tabernacle curtains was the, uh, embroidery of the curtains in the roof.
Down the sides, their beautiful embroidery and symbolism would have been hidden. So from that point of view too, it is much more likely that the wooden surround frame was composed of open ladder-like structures, and that being so, when you entered the tabernacle, the impression you would have got is something like that. The open ladder-like frames overlaid with gold, allowing the beautiful colors and symbolic figures of the tabernacle curtain to appear not only in the roof, but all round the sides everywhere.
Those cherubim, whatever else they are, scripture elsewhere calls them the living creatures surrounding you at every inch, so to speak, would at least have reminded you that you were entering the house of the living God. More of that kind, uh, uh, thing later on. But, uh, if that was the construction, that is interesting from another point of view. In the older days that are happily now disappearing, though not as fast as they should, liberal critics of the Old Testament assured generations of students in theological colleges and universities that this tabernacle never did exist.
They said in the first place, you know, the tabernacle instructions, they don't come from the Yahweh source, uh, uh, you'll see, nor in particular from the Elohistic source. They come from the priestly source. They come from late exilic or post-exilic time, when people like Ezekiel, who were very devoted to God, expressed their devotion to God in this kind of, uh, detailed attention to all sorts of ecclesiastical and ritualistic details. Well, they meant well, but, um, this was rather a late phenomenon in developing Judaism, that to start.
And then they said, of course, you know, if you constructed a building according to the details given you, uh, in the Old Testament, uh, uh, passages, the thing would have collapsed. You'll see, they said, look at the building like this, with curtains, uh, put over it and a flat roof. When, on the odd occasion in the Sinai Peninsula, there is a cloudburst once in about a year and a half, and deluges of rain come down, the rain would have collected on those coverings and would cause them to sink in the middle, and the weight of the rain would have brought the building in and collapsed it completely, you'll see.
And they say, you can see that this is an imaginative, uh, uh, work here, an idealization, that the thing never did really exist in history. It wouldn't have worked if you had tried to make one. And so, with such arguments, they used to, uh, uh, or thought they had proved their point that, um, this part of the book of Exodus comes from a very late source. It is not historical. All kinds of reasons are leading scholarship, as far as I'm aware, uh, to say that that view was highly exaggerated, if not completely mistaken, that there was indeed a tabernacle built by Israel in the wilderness, and far from it being technically impossible, such buildings in such forms had already been known for a thousand years and more, long before the Israelites came out of Egypt.
There is a picture of an engraving, uh, in Egypt, one of the pavilions of one of the kings. You will see it's built by open woodwork, open framework, and over that framework would have been draped curtains, and in the building itself here are various pieces of furniture for the use of the monarch. A portable pavilion, existent at least a thousand years before. To say, therefore, that the building of a tabernacle w- uh, was uh, technically, that the description of the tabernacle is uh, uh, technically inadequate, a building like that couldn't have worked and wouldn't have been known, is just against the evidence of history.
Yes, if they could have such buildings in Egypt, certainly the Israelites could have had them in the, uh, wilderness. That then, for the moment, on the historicity of the thing. But now, in order to put it into its original context, before we proceed to ask about its meaning for us, let's go back to our literary study for a moment. You have probably by now discarded, uh, the two sheets of paper that you were given on the first occasion, or used the back of one to scribble a note to your absent life or something.
So let me just remind you what I was suggesting, that there are the book of Exodus is in two parts, and there are three major movement, four major movements of thought in each part. Let's put them back here again. One, two, three, four, then five, six, and seven, Then you remember we were making the point that there are very significant similarities and differences that we come across sideways.
This, for instance, is God revealing himself to Moses in the flame of the thorn bush. And this is the story of God revealing himself, uh, in flames from the top of Mount Sinai, and perhaps indeed the Mount Horeb where these things were was the same mountain, who knows. More significantly, here is the mention here of God's covenant, and the mention here of a covenant. And if the very arrangement of the book of Exodus obliges us to consider what the relationship between those cu- two covenants is, it will have done us an exceedingly important person.
You will see, I was saying last night that there is a very important difference between this Mosaic covenant and the new covenant under which we are related to God. But that is not merely so. There was a very big difference between this covenant and this earlier covenant. This covenant here is the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as recorded in the book of Genesis, you'll remember. This is another covenant and a very different covenant indeed. For if one goes back to Genesis fifteen, the covenant there described was what we call a one-party covenant.
It followed the symbolic practice of the ancient world, where when covenants were made, they had a covenant sacrifice. The victims were slain, divided into their pieces, and put in two rows. And then the parties that were party to the covenant that had something to fulfill and wish to bind themselves by this covenant, they would ceremonially walk between the two rows of pieces. If both parties had something to promise and to perform, both parties walked through the piece.
If, on the other hand, it was a one-party covenant, only the party that wa- had something to perform walked through the people. Now, it is evident when you read the Genesis story in fifteen six that when God made a promise to Abraham to give him the land to possess it, and guaranteed that promise by a covenant, it is actually evident in the story that only God walked through the pieces. Abram arranged the pieces, and while he was awake, sh- uh, shooed away the birds from it. But when it came to the actual ceremony of walking through the pieces, Abram was in a deep sleep and had a vision.
Even so, had he been a party to that covenant, he could have seen himself in his vision, couldn't he, walking through the pieces. As John in his vision saw himself walking, I don't know where in heaven, and now again back to earth and up a loft again. But in his vision, Abram did not see himself walking through the pieces. When it came to the covenant ceremony, the only thing that passed between the pieces was the great smoking furnace and light that went. Symbol and evidence of the divine presence. It was God making a one-party covenant with Abram to give him the land.
The covenant here was not a one-party covenant. It was a two-party covenant. Notice the exact, uh, description of the history of the actual ceremony of making the covenant. The people were assembled, the terms were read to them and written in a book. They were asked if they would be willing to promise that they would keep these terms, and they responded to a man, all that the Lord has commanded we will do and be obedient. And on that terms, God therefore covenanted himself to do his part. If you keep my covenant, you shall be to me a peculiar treasure, you shall be a kingdom of priests.
Now, why is that important? Well, it's important historically for this reason. On the basis of what covenant and what kind of a covenant were Israel brought out of Egypt on the basis of the Sinai covenant, or certainly not, of course. History gives us the answer at once. But theologically, how important the difference is. Did God come down to this race of slaves and now say, Moses, now Moses, I know the people are in a terrible bondage. Now this is my proposal. If you will keep my covenant indeed and obey all these precepts, then I will deliver you.
Well, no. Not a breath of it. When the people were reduced to utter despair, they scarce found it possible to believe the message that Moses had been commissioned to give them. God announced on what grounds and on what covenant and on the basis of which covenant he was going to deliver them, and it was this, I swore to Abram and the patriarchs to give them this land. I stand by that one party unconditional promise. And I would appeal also to the well-known argument by the Apostle Paul, who, quoting these two covenants in Galatians chapter three, points out that this covenant was made four hundred and odd years before this one, and legally speaking, you must not add the terms of this covenant and make them in here as a condition for the fulfillment of this one.
It's a thing that lo- no law you would ever think of doing anyway, but it mustn't be done, says Paul. And the great promises of inheritance are pledged to Abraham and his seed, not on the basis of this, but on the basis of this. All kind of further deductions Paul makes, as we remember, on the basis of the difference between this covenant and that covenant. You will notice here that God doesn't say in the actual terms of the covenant, now if you keep my covenant, I will give you the land. God couldn't have done that without contradicting this one. And he didn't, of course.
What he offered on Israel under this covenant was their privileged role. You shall be a peculiar treasure. You shall be a kingdom of priests, was what he was offering them under the terms of that covenant. I want to say no more about that. I'm simply, uh, observing how that this is not just a literary structure. The literary structure itself is exceedingly full of the most far-reaching implications. We noticed again, didn't we, that in number three, when God was giving directions for the Passover, he said in the very first set of directions that they were to keep it a memorial, a hug, an annual hug all down their generation, lest they forgot the means by which they came out of Egypt.
And we've already pointed out how that in, uh, 7 there, standing opposite that, and therefore gaining tremendous kick and punch from that very differing fact, is the story how Israel had another hug and danced around their golden calf to say, these be thy gods that brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Now, if that be true, gentlemen, then we've got to ask ourselves, haven't we, the significance of tabernacle plus priesthood here, and tabernacle and priesthood here.
The thought model, the literary structure would prompt us to ask, is there any connection of thought between two and six? And is there, let's put a question mark, any important thought connection between four and eight? Well, Of course, one immediate and obvious and simple thing, uh, uh, uh, occurs between two and six, doesn't it? In two, we hear the repeated demand from God through Moses to Pharaoh, let my people go that they may worship me.
And if that was the purpose of the, uh, deliverance of Israel, here is the purpose now being realized. God's demand was genuine. It was not just a trick to get Israel out of Egypt, to pretend that they had a special service to perform. It was the very purpose for which they were delivered. And from a practical way, the emphasis that when they got out, they were to spoil the Egyptians and, uh, be given their money, their gold, their wealth. Here is how that, uh, a great deal of that wealth was to be employed.
Let's leave that just for a moment and come to four and eight. Any connection of thought? I'd like you, if you would, to look at the great song of victory in Exodus fifteen. m As Israel stood on the further banks of the Red Sea and celebrate the victory that God has just achieved, they say in verse thirteen, thou in thy mercy hast led the people which thou hast redeemed, thou hast guided them in thy strength to thy holy habitation.
Then again, in verse seventeen, thou shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. Now, obviously, in verse seventeen they are thinking far and away beyond the tabernacle that was made in the wilderness. Here is a prophecy of what God's objective would be. He would bring them into the land, and there would be built their great sanctuary. It was a built, and when it was built, uh, the historian in Kings dates it for you so many years after the Exodus.
So here then is a connection of thought. Now I want to, uh, uh, and the connection of thought is the ultimate, of course, the ultimate, uh, effect of that deliverance. The smashing of Pharaoh, the drowning of him in the Red Sea, let the people finally free to achieve this eventual objective. Until they came to the building of the great permanent temple in the land. They were, so to speak, to anticipate that and all its glory. They could indeed anticipate it even while they were on their journey and not yet arrived. They could already enjoy the blessings and the experience in some measure of what that final temple of God would be.
Incidentally, it talks to us as Christians, doesn't it? Great and ultimate goal, according to the book of the Revelation, will be when we see the new heavens and the new earth. And coming down from the opened new heavens shall be the glorious city, the New Jerusalem. And the voice declares, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men. When all the battles have been fought, when every mile and kilometer of the journey has been covered, when all the defeats have been turned into victory, and this world is no more, and we stand on the brink of eternity, hallelujahing because the devil and all his works and all opposition of the old serpent has been defeated, and ask what God has achieved from the ages of time, the answer will be, in the symbolic terms, of Tabernacle.
Gentlemen, we can't afford to neglect the study of Tabernacle. As it was Israel's objective, so it is the objective of the Creator himself for his new heaven and new earth. We do not have to wait for the coming of the new heavens and new earth. We may know some of its glories now, men. Or to borrow ter- Paul's terminology from the Ephesians, yes, we are being built together even now for a habitation of God through the Spirit. And here on our pilgrim pathway unto the great eternity, we may anticipate and know and enjoy what it is to have the presence of God within the building of the church together now, that by the way, I want now to appear to wander from the subject.
I tell you, I mind you, gentlemen, that sometimes when I appear to wander from the subject, I am wandering from the subject. But then there are other times when I'm only appearing to wander and not really wandering, you see. And I stay with this, these two here to come back to this song. Here were Moses, uh, and the Israelites standing on the further bank of the Red Sea, singing their praise, for the Lord has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea. Triumph over Egypt, over Pharaoh, therefore. Let me now quote to you once more the passage in Isaiah fifty one verse nine, where Isaiah is referring to this great event.
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord. Awake as in the days of old, the generation of ancient time. Art thou not it that cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced the dragon. That kind of language has led a good many scholars to think that the real background to the story of Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea is Canaanite mythology. For in many of the early myths, there is talk of the rebellion of the sea, the great vast waters of the flood, how they raised themselves up against the superior god or gods.
And there was a struggle between the gods, so to speak, the gods, the nether gods of the sea and the gods of the sky. And that the great heavenly gods overcame the sea and put it back in its place. And the sea is referred to as the great dragon, Tiamat or some other such thing, the great dragon of the deep that rose up in rebellion against the superior gods and had to be subdued and put in its place. There is, of course, a tremendous literature on that Canaanite mythology.
And scholars have said, well, look, if you would understand Tabernacle, and even if you would understand the story of Israel coming out, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, by the Passover land and then crossing the sea, it has its origin in this mythological fact. Look at the terms in Isaiah, slicing into the old dragon, that is, the monster of the deep. This is ancient mythology that has kind of been bowderized, you know, disinfected, sanitized, and then used in the Old Testament. Now that's a very important and i- important question for us to face.
For here in two, that stands opposite Tabernacle. We were talking the other night, weren't we, what's involved in these plagues? A power struggle, we thought. Between whom? The gods of the Nile and Jehovah. Well, what is this then? What view of creation, what view of the forces of nature is here? And what view of creation is here? Let me elaborate on that.
In this tabernacle here, we have, uh, for instance, a lampstand. On which at nighttime, uh, seven lamps were put on the six branches and on the top bit. Don't get upset about the shape of the lampstand in the drawing, if you like, the one with the branches coming up, all level, well, you, you have that. I didn't mind. It's irrelevant for our purposes now. What does it represent? Is this myth- mythological symbolism?
Is this astrology? Allah came in us? Is this a symbolic represent- uh, representation of the lights, the sun, the moon, the stars? What is it? So we come back to this, uh, story here, and cutting Rahab in pieces and other such things as Isaiah has it. What is Isaiah talking about? Well, if he's talking about the event in Exodus fifteen, let us at once notice, gentlemen, that Exodus fifteen is not mythology. It is offered us as history.
A literal Red Sea, geographically located, with a strong east wind that was a very literal east wind, an historical east wind that divided the sea. Israel went over it, and the waters of the sea, being composed of their normal chemicals, drowned Pharaoh and his host. It is not being offered as mythology. This, according to the Hebrew narrative, is history, and dated history. He tells you when they came out of the, uh, uh, uh, of Egypt, he gives you dates to date it within history.
You say, why then did, uh, Isaiah use these terms like Rahab and the dragon of the deep, and so forth and so on? The answer that many evangelical scholars and conservative scholars would give is perhaps, uh, as follows. Let me take an example from English. We in England happily eat cereals for breakfast. Actually, the word comes from ceres in Latin. The old corn. Cerialis, therefore, and all those terms are in Latin originally connected with their mythology of the god of food, the corn goddess, and so forth and so on.
And the poets would use these exalted terms in their poetic fashion for ordinary bread and food, and presently in Latin they lose all their mythological backgrounds and they become ordinary words for food. Many an honest Englishman eats his cereals at breakfast and he calls them cereals, and he hasn't a ghost of the notion that there was ever any mythology connected with them. What is Isaiah talking about when he talks about splitting Rahab in two and the old dragon, he's talking about a historical event, and if indeed he is using terms that had their origins in mythology, it's not their origin that counts, it is how Isaiah is using them and of what he is using them.
That is the important thing, surely. To stray even further, many scholars have pointed out in these last decades that when you come to Genesis chapter one, the story of creation in Genesis chapter one, far from being mythological, is directed to denying Canaanite and the Cadian mythology. In the story of the creation in Genesis one, the stars are not gods. Neither is the sun and the moon, neither are the sun and the moon gods. They're just light bearers, physical things, and God made them for their respective purposes.
And as for the stars, they're dismissed in a couple of syllables, so to speak. There is, is not mythology. In fact, there is some force in the observation that the very story of creation is aiming to deny the perverted views of God's creation that had been developing in those Eastern mythologies all down the centuries, as men, having known God originally as Creator, had suppressed the knowledge of him as Creator and fashioned the deities worshiping the creature rather than the Creator, and thus slipping into an idolatrous interpretation of the universe.
Now, when God takes out his people Israel and begins again, and they write under his inspiration the story of creation, it is concerned to deny the idolatrous and mythological interpretations of the universe current in their contemporary. Now, that is a very important thing, and when now we turn to consider, uh, uh, section six and the building of the tabernacle, it becomes even more relevant. The tabernacle is the place where God comes and dwells. How did those ancient Israelites historically conceive of this? Here in two, we have the Egyptians with their interpretation of the universe.
The Nile is a god. The sun is a god. Pharaoh, if you please, at length, is a god. The idolatrous interpretation of the universe, where the forces of nature are s- are thought of as gods. Now, in this section, God so deals with Pharaoh to make it clear what he really is. He is the God in the midst of the earth. He's not some absentee landlord. He can poke his finger in to the course of nature, but he makes it abundantly clear that he is not one of the forces of nature.
He's not the god of the Nile or the god in hail or the god in the tree. He's not one amongst those forces. He's not even the biggest of those forces. There is the Hebrew statement and God's demonstration that he is the transcendent Lord, author of the creation, but not a part of its forces. The difference between those two views, of course, is exceedingly important and potent. In our modern world, we have the surging, upsurging under the New Age movement of the hoary old idolatrous animistic interpretation of the universe, that God is in the natural forces of the universe, that God is in the trees, in the stream.
That God is in man, pantheistic as well as animistic. That man is God, a bit of God. And what is being told us here in Exodus, therefore, has and will continue to have more and more significance and relevance to our modern situation, as our modern Western world goes further back now and develops these old, hoary, age-old false interpretation of the forces of nature. It makes it all the more, uh, important, therefore, to understand what the tabernacle is saying. Yes, this is saying that God came down and dwelt among them.
Thus he remained the transcendent Lord if he thus comes down and is immanent among his people? This is a topic, of course, as you know, that exercised the rabbis and still exercises them. They're not interested in the tabernacle as typological of Jesus Christ or Christianity, but they are concerned with this very serious and basic element. Does the tabernacle compromise God's transcendence? And what is Exodus saying when it says that God made his throne above cherubim? Come, come, come, come. What are cherubim? Is this a hangover from old mythological ideas of the forces of the universe?
What is it? And I want to say that no, if we properly understood Exodus, far from Exodus having to be apologized for as a hangover from the old mythological, uh, uh, uh, age, it is a positive statement of the truth and goes quite con- con- counter to the mythology. Let's take a hint at this point from the New Testament explanation. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, we are informed in chapter eight, Hebrews chapter eight, that Moses was instructed and shown a model, so to speak, a plan of what God wanted him to build.
And when they eventually built it, verse chapter eight verse five says that it was a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. So when we look, let's take just one, uh, uh, uh, example of that. When we look at that lampstand, according to the New Testament, what it is, is not a symbolic representation of sun, moons, and stars, and the lu- luminaries. It is bringing down in terms we can understand the great realities of the invisible world.
This lampstand, as we noticed the other day, was in the form of a tree with its roots here, its central trunk, and its branches. And in those branches, the knobs that were the buds, the blossoms coming from them, and then the fruit, the almond fruit. Three stages of life at the same time in that tree. Carol Meyer has done a great deal of work and has a very interesting monograph on that thing, tracing the iconography of lampstands like this in the Middle East, showing quite clearly this connection between lampstand and the form.
This is both a vehicle of light and a representation of the tree of life. And the New Testament will comment on that symbolism, won't it, and talk to us about the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. According to Hebrews eight, what was happening in this tabernacle in the wilderness was that the transcendent Lord, coming down to dwell amongst his people, brought to earth symbols that would bring heaven to earth, so to speak, the great transcendent realities down to earth. We can take another cue into this.
From, for instance, the first gospel, uh, the fourth gospel, John chapter one, Where the th- what is stated here in symbolic terms is there stated in literal terms. John chapter one and verses three and four. There John, talking to us about the person of Christ, talks to us about him as creator. All things were made by him, and without him was nothing made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. An interesting collocation of idea.
First of all, Christ, the agent in creation, all things made through him. And immediately in that context, the observation, in him was life. It is talking about created life all around us, the vast teeming life of, uh, the created world around us. And if we ask, where did that life come from? Where did the creator get the life from to make all these things with? The answer is he didn't get it from anywhere. He is the source of it. In him was life. It's a statement of his creatorhood.
He is the source of all created life. And that life becomes the light of men. I'm not unaware. Many scholars, even conservative Christian scholars, feel that while there may be some general analogy, God, uh, came and dwelt among the Israelites, and now by God, by his grace, comes and dwells among us. That's about as far as you can go in the study, and certainly in the use of the tabernacle. To attempt to expound its details, many feel is so grotesque, and anyway has been so abused in times past, that it's not the kind of thing that nowadays the normal, sane, healthy, balanced theological mind would attempt.
And anybody who attempts to expound the detail of the tabernacle shows that he must, if he's a scholar, be a little bit schizophrenic. And one part of him attached to the pursuit of rigorous theology, and the other part given to wild, uh, typological exegesis. And anyway, some say some of my friends, of course, I mean tabernacle, well, I've never preached it myself, you see, I'm engaged in evangelism. That would be hopelessly inappropriate to, I mean, fancy getting an old atheist and setting him down in front of the tabernacle and start preaching the gospel to an atheist from the tabernacle.
So obviously grotesquely inappropriate that it could never be done and should not be done. Well, I take that general point. But I found myself unexpectedly a year or so ago giving a course of lectures on the tabernacle, when a friend of mine who's professor of, uh, uh, uh, of, um, computers and artificial intelligence and all that kind of thing in the local university brought along some of his PhD students to lectures on the tabernacle. They happened to be mainline mainland Chinese PhD candidates and atheists to a man. And I was put on the spot to know what on earth should I talk about on the tabernacle in front of atheists.
I got surely to preach the gospel to them. And so I began by saying, now, here we have a representation of a very ancient temple. But why on earth would people in modern days, uh, be interested in such an ancient temple? And haven't we had millions of temples, millions too many temples in the world? Couldn't we do better to scrap all such things, you'll see? Why on earth would anybody in the scientific world be interested in an ancient temple? Then I said, well, for the first reason, that when it existed, this tabernacle was unique among the nations of the Middle East.
Because in this temple, the the Israelites had no image of their God. And that very difference between them and the surrounding nations was exceedingly eloquent, because it, uh, conveyed their concept of God. Secondly, I went to the ark that is the very heart of this thing and pointed out that in that ark, one of its main functions was this, that it should be the, uh, uh, container of the tables of the law. This is what tabernacle, therefore, stands for, one of its major functions.
And so I went from that to refer to the law and some of the main contentions of the law. And number one, keep the Sabbath, for in six days God made the world and rested on the seventh. The doctrine of creation, vastly different from all contemporary theories of the universe. The nations around having sunk into an idolatrous interpretation of the universe with the deification of the forces of nature. Israel standing for the transcendent creator. I said, what does it matter?
I pointed to the elevated view of man that is contained in the early books of Moses. Man made in the image of God to be God's viceroy, to rule for God over the material universe. In contrast to the theories of the ancient world that man was made as the groveling slave of the gods to fulfill the lusts and desires of the gods. And then I speedily came to its application. I said, you know, that difference between Israel and the ancients is still relevant, isn't it? Nobody nowadays will fall down and worship idols in our sophisticated scientific world.
But I said, if you will give me an atheist now, and you ask your atheist, what are the ultimate powers that control us and our human life? What are the ultimate powers that, uh, produced us? What are the ultimate powers that will bring us to our end? We don't need to call them gods, we will call them the ultimate powers. What are they? And your atheist will have to say that the ultimate powers that control us are simply the physical forces and the material that the universe is made of. The weak atomic power, the strong atomic power, gravity, electromagnetism, and if there be anti-gravity or whatever it is, these are the things that control us.
They brought us into existence. They will eventually destroy us and our world. As far as I can see, they're saying no different from what the ancient idolaters said. For when Egypt worshipped the god of the Nile and the god of the sun and all these other things, they were defying the forces of nature and saying that that these are the forces of nature that ultimately control things, and all there is behind them are the dark forces of fate and chance. And of course, that modern view is just as idolatrous as the ancient view.
And if when Israel were in Egypt, they found that idolatrous society a house of bondage and slavery from which they needed to be delivered, it seems to me quite evident that if it is true there is no transcendent law creator, and that our gods, our ultimate powers responsible for our making and for our eventual end and dissolution, are simply the impersonal forces of the universe, then we are in a desperate prison house. Unless somehow we can find our escape from planet Earth, off to some other planet that some people talk of.
Our scientific experts tell us that our planet is doomed one day. It will be destroyed one way or another, mindlessly destroyed. And long before it comes to that, what about me as an individual? Am I merely the product of blind, mindless forces working by chance? The victim of the conflicting cosmic forces that I do my best to appease and control, but in the end they get the mastery, and that's the end of me. One day a little virus will enter my body. It won't have two penny worth of sense in its head.
I shall see what it's doing. It's going to destroy me. My aesthetic sense, my intelligence, my body, my everything. I can see what it's doing. I shall not have the power to stop it. I am its victim, its prisoner. Is that our concept of man? Is that our concept of creation? There is the other side to the, to the tablets that were in that box, and that is the tables of the law. And here God was saying, the sense of right and wrong that we all have, the sense of morality, where does it come from?
Behind that sense of morality is the personal God, creator and author and vindicator of the authority of that moral law. But if there is no creator, or if the forces of the universe are amoral, or if they are, as the ancients, uh, uh, thought of them as themselves, quite immoral, what happens to our whole concept of morality and justice. Our humanistic friends try to get out of it, don't they, by saying that we as human intelligent beings can come to a, a moral contract between one another.
That is, as one of my humanist friend philosophers, uh, used to say, we'll say we don't need God to have a workable morality. It is simple. If you, if you poke your finger in my eye, you'll find I shall poke my finger in your eye. We shall then find that's not a sensible way to go around, and we shall come to an agreement that you won't poke your finger in my eye, and I shall poke my finger in yours. And that will work. We don't need to bring God in as an authority behind morality. Will it work? I said to my friend now, my name happens to be Adolf Hitler. And I'm proposing to put my finger in your eye in a very firm way.
You say to me, no, you won't, because if you do, we shall put our finger back in your eye. I say, no, you won't. Because when I slaughtered my six million Jews and you come after me to put your finger in my eye, I shall shoot my brains out. I've enjoyed my time on earth, and there's nothing beyond it, and I've got away with it. And what shall we say to his victims as they cry out for merc- for justice? Suppose we were visiting a concentration camp and they cry out for justice. We demand justice.
What would you tell them? Well, look, do be grown up. You're not going to get justice in this world, I'm afraid. And there is no afterlife, there is no God, there's no justice there either. And the social theory contract of justice breaks down, and it leaves morality and justice as a mere rope of sand. We are contending for everything when we're contending for the lesson that was enshrined in that ark, and its voice against the idolatrous civilization of the ancient world.
In that ark, subsequently there came to be a pot of manna. And I went to pre- on to preach to my Chinese atheist scientific friends. The lesson that we derive from that pot of manna, the lesson that we considered yesterday when we, uh, uh, considered the origin of the pot of manna and what our attitude should be to our daily bread. What is a correct understanding o- o- o- of the whole phenomenon of our work and our eating our d- our daily bread? Is it merely a struggle against impersonal nature? Does man sit alone at his breakfast table with his food?
Or is there a personal God behind it? This gentleman seems to me, at any rate, in my kind of context, a message that still needs to be propounded loud and clear, and will become more necessary as Western society reverts to being more pagan than it ever used to be. Now you'll come to an historical question. This doctrine of creation that was enshrined in the law inside that ark, where did Israel get it from? Social anthropological theory in my youth used to say that Israel evolved, the doctrine evolved among the Israelites.
They gradually, like anybody else, started off with animism perhaps, and worked up through polytheism, and from that they proceeded to hentheism, that's one god per tribe, and from that they went into, uh, monotheism. And if only they would be sensible, they progressed beyond that to atheism, of course. But subsequent and social anthropological research, as far as I'm aware, has not proved that point. There is no clear evidence that people have evolved in that sense. And as far as Israel is concerned, the historical evidence goes the other way, that foreverlastingly Israel were departing from this doctrine of creation and compromising with the idolatrous interpretations of the universe that they found around them.
Far from evolving to it, they were evolving, if they were evolving away from it, and having constantly to be pulled back by the roots of their hair, by their prophets, to come back and stop compromising with these idolatrous interpretations of creation, and come back to the true God, the true transcendent creative Lord, uh, uh, who had revealed himself to them through his word and his prophets. So let that do for the moment. I'm now making the point that far from being irrelevant, when we study the background and context of the building of this tabernacle and what it has to say about God vis-a-vis creation, the true interpretation as against the false, we shall find that at that level it has a loud voice and relevance to our modern society.
But then, because of the course of history in Christ- Christendom, it has another big relevance, and I'd like to talk about that after we have had a break for fresh air. Gentlemen, on the relevance to what Tabernacle stood for, not only as a message to its own contemporaries in those far off days, but as a message to our modern world in its increasingly idolatrous interpretation of the forces of the universe. Now I want to say some things about the relevance of the message of the Tabernacle to Christendom as a whole and Christendom historically.
And I base my remarks upon what I think I find the writer of the letter to the Hebrews saying, and particularly the idea of perfection that he develops. Let's turn to Hebrews and chapter six as our starting point for this consideration. Wherefore, he says, let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ and press on unto perfection. And naturally enough, the question rises, what does he mean by perfection? Is he talking to Christian people that have entered into the blessings of forgiveness and regeneration, uh, and now are beginning to make progress in their spiritual pathway, uh, with the hope that one day they shall arrive at total sinless perfection, not on earth, of course, but, uh, at the coming of the Lord Jesus.
But meanwhile, pressing on to perfection, in the sense, for instance, that Paul talks of it in Philippians chapter three. this one thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind, I press forward to the mark of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ. Not that I'm already completely mature or perfect, but I press on if I might apprehend that for which I have been apprehended by Christ Jesus. Is that what the writer to the Hebrews is saying? You are all good Christian people, now go on from your elementary, uh, stage of Christianity towards the perfection.
And it seems to me that when we, uh, follow the recurrence of this idea of perfection through the chapters that follow, it becomes apparent that that is not what the writer to the Hebrews is saying. What he is saying is this. These people, uh, to whom he wrote began life as Jewish people, believers in God, following as best they knew how the traditions that had been handed them from God indeed and mediated to them through the Old Testament prophets, that are very good beginning.
Naturally, the beginning that was there laid was a beginning that was shared by Christianity. But now that Christianity had come, these people who have professed faith in the Lord Jesus are called upon to leave their imperfect stage of Judaism and press on to full-blown Christianity. For instance, let's look at the things he describes as foundational, Hebrews chapter six verse 1.
Wherefore, let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ and press on to perfection, not laying again a foundation. Now here comes the foundation of repentance from dead works, of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms, notice the plural, and of the laying on of hands, and of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And you will observe that in that list there is nothing particularly Christian. These are all elements that any good Pharisee would have, uh, subscribed to in the time of our Lord.
They are all of them elements that any Pharisee who still rejected Jesus as Lord and Messiah could nonetheless still subscribe to. These are not the foundational doctrines of Christianity, are they? For if they were, where is there any talk of the, uh, deity of the Lord Jesus? Where is there any talk of his atoning death? Where is there any talk of his resurrection in these things that are said to be foundational? Certainly they are foundational, but they're not the foundational doctrines of, uh, Christianity, strictly so called. These are the foundations that God laid in Judaism.
These are the foundations that the people had who then professed faith in Jesus as Messiah. But now, having faced, professed faith in Jesus as Messiah, they are called upon to advance from their Judaism and its good but imperfect things, and to advance into full-blown Christianity, to perfection in that sense, not to sinless perfection. But then let's take examples of what he means, you'll see. In chapter seven, he describes the high priesthood of Aaron.
Uh, and that was according to the commandment of God. And generations of Israelites had approached God through that God-ordained medium of a high priest as an intermediary between them and God, an earthly high priest. The high priest still existed in the Jerusalem system of Judaism when this letter was written. Many of these Jews would still be attached to the worship of the temple and a high priest dressed up in his gorgeous robes, mediating between them and God. And what the writer is now urging these Christians to do is to leave that imperfect system and press towards the perfect priesthood and pray, what is the perfect priesthood?
Look, for instance, at chapter seven verse eighteen: For there is a disannulling of the foregoing commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect. And he is thinking in particular of the law pertaining to the priesthood. But it made nothing. Therefore, it has now been replaced, and God has brought in the true, the perfect priest, that is our blessed Lord Jesus, made a priest no longer after the order of Aaron, but made a priest after the order of Melchizedek.
His priesthood is the perfect priest. We are to move from the old, good for its time, but imperfect priesthood of Judaism to the perfect priesthood of our blessed Lord. Or come into chapter eight as he pursues the argument. He mentions now the tabernacle that Moses made, and he points out that it was ordered by God. It was a shadow of the heavenly things, verse five. Uh, it will say, glorious then as it was, but it was not perfect, was it?
It was established by the old covenant. And now he goes on to say that that old covenant is being done away with and replaced, as we saw last night. And now he is asking them to move on from the old covenant to the new covenant. Having dealt with the new covenant to which they are to move on, he then comes back to the question of the tabernacle that was an expression of that old covenant. He says even the first covenant had ordinances, divine service, and this and that and other, and a sanctuary in this world, and it had a system of sacrifices to go with it, but it wasn't the ideal, and it wasn't the perfect.
You'll see, he says, please notice that in that ancient tabernacle, there were two compartments, you'll see. And, uh, whereas God came and dwelt in that second compartment on the throne there, the people were not allowed into that second compartment, indeed. They weren't even allowed into the first compartment. Only the priests could come into that first compartment, and the people had to stay outside. Among the priests themselves, none could ever go behind that veil and come into the immediate presence of God.
Only the high priest once a year was allowed on their behalf to come and stand in the presence of God. And the architecture of the tabernacle was so designed, says the writer to the Hebrews, by the Holy Spirit himself to convey this message, the Holy Ghost thus signifying. The architecture was not accidental. It was a deliberate form of architecture designed by the high priest to convey a message. The fact that this veil prevented even the ordinary priests from coming in, and prevented the high priest himself from coming in except once a year, and certainly prevented the ordinary people from coming in, it was designed for this reason.
The Holy Ghost is signifying that the way into the holy place has not yet been made manifest, while as the first tabernacle is yet standing, which is a parable for the time present, according to which are offered both gifts and sacrifices that cannot, now here comes our term again, that cannot, as pertaining to the conscience, make the worshipper perfect. And so he goes on to talk about those, uh, rituals and those sacrifices. He comes, uh, to the climax of that argument in chapter ten and says, for the law, having a shadow of the good things to come and not the very image of the things, they can never, with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh.
Now, the writer is not denying that when the Israelites came according to this tabernacle system and the laws of the old covenant, and they offered their animal sacrifices and confessed their sins, he is not denying that they received forgiveness. They did receive forgiveness. Leviticus explicitly says that when they came and brought their animal sacrifice, laid their hands on its head, slew it, and the priest offered its blood upon the altar, and thus and thus and thus, their sin, whatever it was they had done, was forgiven them. And the writer to the Hebrews is too much an expert in the New Testament to say that they didn't get forgiveness.
They did get forgiveness. Ah, but their conscience, he says, was not made perfect. What does he mean by perfect? Well, he tells you what he means, you'll see. For if, he says, those, uh, worshippers had once been thoroughly cleansed as to their consciences, then the sacrifices would have ceased. But you can see it if you watch an ancient Jew, uh, your Jewish contemporaries, uh, says the writer, that though they get forgiveness, they haven't a conscience yet made perfect.
Because they constantly come and offer further sacrifices to get further forgiveness. The matter is never settled. They're always paying. It's like when you have a mortgage on your house, gentlemen. I hope you've paid yours off. But, uh, if you borrowed large sums of money, now you've got to pay. What a business it is. As the month comes to its end, you rack your brains to find a few extra coppers in your bank account. Have you got enough, haven't you? And by squeezing all things, you manage to come up and get the check off to the building society or the bank in time.
That's that month, and that night you go to bed and sleep happily, but alas, another month comes round and the same old business all over again. You've got to go and pay again and pay again, and all down the dreary months of the long years, with half a dozen children to support and one wife at least, and all these other things, where am I going to muster the money enough for the next payment to be made? And though you pay the bank today, your conscience is not clear yet, is it? There's a lot more payments to be made. Comes the day when you pay the last payment, and the house is yours. You sleep the sleep of the just.
But next month comes round, and you say, now, what about the mortgage? You'll say, well, oh, I think I paid it. Well, no, just in case and to make sure, I'll go and pay. No, you don't do. If the thing has been completely paid, there's no more paying. But in Israel, you'll see, though they offered their sacrifice and got forgiveness, next month, next year, they came and paid again, and again, and again. Showed their conscience was not yet made perfect. And what the writer is urging them is not to move on from elementary Christianity to a more advanced Christianity.
He's asking them to move on to the system of Judaism and its system of constant offering of sacrifices into real Christianity that presents to us that perfect sacrifice that has been made once and for all, that has secured for us, according to the New Covenant, such forgiveness that if we have that complete forgiveness, there is no more offering for sin. You don't need to continue the practice of offering sacrifices to get forgiveness of sins. You have such complete forgiveness under the new covenant that the Holy Spirit witnesses to you that there is no more process of constantly offering sacrifices to get forgiveness.
The writer is urging them to move on from the inadequacy of Ju- Judaism, ad- inadequacies of Judaism to full-blown Christianity. And... from that old tabernacle, look at chapter nine verse eleven: But Christ, having come a high priest of good things to come through the greater and more perfect tabernacle. And once more we notice what the contrast is. He's not saying that early Christians had rather humble churches. Uh, they weren't much good, you know, meeting in upper rooms and things like that, uh, which really are not dignified enough for the general public.
And now you'd be wise as Christians to develop much more ornate, uh, tabernacles. No, no. The contrast is between Moses' tabernacle, glorious it was, magnificent in its color scheme and symbolism, and rich with its vestments and ornate gold, silver, and precious stones, its incense, and thus and thus and thus and thus. Marvelous, full of mysticism and art and aesthetic appeal. But to move on to that, because it was a, move on from that because it was only a shadow of the real thing, and go in for that greater and more perfect tabernacle, and pray, what is that?
Why, that is the heavenly tabernacle. The great reality of which Moses' tabernacle was but a copy. That tabernacle in which at the moment s- sits our blessed high priest himself, Jesus Christ our Lord. And it is through him we draw near to God. And here comes the glorious bit, isn't it, of our Christian gospel. I never cease rejoicing when I think about it and preach it. There's a something in me that wants to burst out preaching it. You'll see, because of the magnificence and the complete, uh, adequacy of the sacrifice of Christ. Listen to the whole climax of this argument.
Chapter ten, verse eighteen, nineteen: Now where remission of these is, that is where complete for- s- forgiveness of sins is, there is no more process of offering for sin. Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us a new and a living way through the veil, that is to say his flesh. And having a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our body washed with pure water. So what the ancient people could not do, what the priests could not do, what the high priest himself could do only once in a year in this earthly tabernacle.
That is, they could not come into the holy place within the veil, that is the most holy place, and stand in the presence of God. What they couldn't do, we can do. We are invited and urged to do. And what is more glorious when this verse tells us that we have boldness to enter the holiest of all. It is no longer thinking that we have boldness to come into the back room of some earthly tabernacle. We have boldness in spirit to enter the immediate presence of God in heaven. Glorious Christianity, isn't it?
Who wouldn't move on from good Judaism, God-given Judaism, but inadequate, temporary, only a shadow. Who wouldn't want to move on from that into the glory of full-blown Christianity? Uh, gentlemen, I remind you of a sad thing that early happened in Christendom. I suppose it was in part because many Christians only at first had the Old Testament scriptures, and studied them some of them more perhaps than they did the New Testament authors.
Uh, presently, as you know, Christian folks reverted to Judaism along many of these lines. They began to build their meeting places after the form of the ancient Jewish temple. And their churches had a first division where the people could come, and then a more sacred part where only the priests and perhaps the choir members could come.
And sometimes they built great screens across the chancel to keep the people out. Sometimes they even built complete walls from floor to ceiling, right across, with doors opening perhaps, but the people could come to the first division, only the priests into the second. In other words, they had reverted to this kind of thing, reverted to Judaism. It's no wonder, is it, that the result of that perpetual visual impact upon the people was to give the people the impression that they could never be sure of getting to God's heaven.
That must be left uncertain. Why, they couldn't even come into the most holy part of the church. Let alone be sure that they had access into God's heaven at last. And to them it became utterly unthinkable that they had access into the immediate presence of God. Now, I'm a simplistic chap, as you know, but when some of my good friends in Ireland find that I believe, I'm sure, of salvation, they say, tut tut. They, they, I mean, they're very sympathetic with this poor man who has funny ideas, and they kiss me on both cheeks, but uh, but, but you shouldn't be sure you're going to be in heaven.
And then being awkward and, and, you know, that, all that kind of thing, and now even simplistic. I said, I don't understand that, what you say, I can't be sure I'm going to heaven. I've been there today. What do you mean you've been there today? Don't talk nonsense. Well, I say, yes, I have. I mean, what does the Epistle to the Hebrews mean? That we have boldness to enter the holiest of all. Which holiest of all? It's the holiest of all where our great priest has entered, isn't it? And the glory of our Christian gospel is this: you don't have to wait until the eternal tabernacle to know whether you're going to be admitted into the holiest of all and into God's presence or not.
Here on the desert sand, so to speak, on our pilgrimage towards our eternal city. In spirit, we have liberty to enter into the holiest of all. What a delightful message that is. Gentlemen, I sometimes think it would be worth building a whole tabernacle model, if only to get that message across to our contemporaries. And to point out to them the significance of that great event that happened when our Lord was crucified and cried, it is finished. And the veil of the temple was rent. God was finished with Judaism and its practices, and showed simultaneously that the way is open into his immediate presence.
What a glorious gospel. But then Christendom did other things, didn't it? It not only invented church buildings after the measure of Judaism, but then it took the memorial feast of the Lord Jesus and turned it into a sacrifice that had to be constantly offered to obtain forgiveness of sins and to get people out of purgatory and whatnot. So people were taught that as they offer this bloody sacrifice, which is the body of Jesus Christ, they get forgiveness as they offer it. And that was a complete reversion to Judaism. No wonder when people constantly think that they are offering the Eucharist to get forgiveness, you will find that they don't have a conscience made perfect.
Of course they don't. Anybody that continues offering the Eucharist in order to get forgiveness is, comes under this description. If he had a conscience made perfect, he wouldn't offer anything. The glory is that because we have complete forgiveness, says the Holy Spirit, there is no more prosphora, there is no more process of offering. Not the practice of constantly offering the so-called body and blood of Christ in order to p- to get forgiveness. That is not Christianity, that is Judaism. And then, of course, in order to have people to offer this supposed sacrifice, they invented a priesthood after the order of Judaism as well, didn't they?
I think it was Augustine who thought it was a very good idea. So you had a high priest like Aaron and minor ranks of priests, all of them distinguished in their position and their robes from the ordinary lay people, like it was in Israel. And reverting to Judaism contradicted a basic doctrine of Christianity, that in Christianity all believers are priests. There is not a distinction between some consecrated Christians and others. It's Judaism. And ended up with a curious anomaly.
In Judaism, they only had one high priest, but in many quarters in Christendom, they they've resulted in two high priests, one on earth and one in heaven. Odd, isn't it? But not so innocent. We mustn't be tempted to say, but what's wrong? It's a lovely little sort of antiquarianism. No, it isn't. Because it impinges on people's approach to God, their sense of acceptance with God. And it's not a question of, uh, peddling and preaching and pushing one denominational narrow view and interpretation.
This is basic Christianity and all the joy of it. What a magnificent joy to come along people, side of people who have had their conscience never made perfect, unsure of salvation, unsure of final welcome in the presence of God. What a magnificent privilege it is to come alongside of them and point out these scriptures that through the one sacrifice of Christ they have immediate entrance into the presence of God now and shall be sure of entering in at last. And if it's only for that purpose of helping the early Christians get their feet under them and be established and rooted in true Christian gospel, it would be worth using the illustration of the tabernacle, wouldn't it?
And using it as a basis from which to expound the epistle to the Hebrews. I don't really know how you could expound the epistle to the Hebrews without first taking your tabernacle seriously. For in stating this side of Christianity, Christianity is stated in contrast to Judaism, its tabernacle and high priesthood. Let's leave it there.
