How could the study of an ancient Tabernacle benefit my life as a believer today? The benefits are totally spiritual and if knowing Christ and loving Him more is the outcome – then there’s no bigger reason to be excited!

More than once in the New Testament, the heart of the Christian is identified as the location our great God wants to call His home on earth.

Neither massive marble cathedral sanctuaries nor squeaky clean and reverently silent temples are God’s focus today. Your heart is! And it doesn’t get any more amazing than that – especially when we know how poverty-stricken, and pathetically dilapidated our hearts are – apart from grace. He wants to come to us, abide with us and feel right at home in our hearts and empower us from the inside out.

So we launch into this personally instructive and Christ-focused devotional study with the first mention of the tabernacle in our Bible.

Exodus 25:8-10 NASB “Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them. “According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it. They shall construct an ark of acacia wood two and a half cubits long, and one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high.”

Exodus 25:8-9 NLT “Have the people of Israel build Me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them. You must build this Tabernacle and its furnishings exactly according to the pattern I will show you.

If you regularly read your Bible through from beginning to end (following a Bible Reading Plan), perhaps you’ve been tempted to speed-read through the fifty-chapter section that deals with the tabernacle and its service. You’re not the first one!

So should we bother studying it? Absolutely! These copies and shadows and illustrations do, in fact, help us see Christ from many angles and vantage points.

According to John, if everything that could have been written about Christ was written, a library as big as the world would be too small. (John 21:25) So, obviously, God has been selective in what He has chosen to share with us in writing. There must be some significance then to the fact that while only two chapters in the Bible focus on God’s might and power in creation, fifty chapters are used to detail the Tabernacle and its service. Why?

The Bible is so clear that this elaborate system of worship – which seems really complicated to us today – all pointed forward to the Lord Jesus Christ. He would replace and make redundant and obsolete all the things we are about to study. So should we bother studying it? Absolutely! These copies and shadows and illustrations do, in fact, help us see Christ from many angles and vantage points. We will discover and appreciate many beautiful truths as we study the Tabernacle together and see how it points forward to Christ and all that is ours in Him to enjoy and appreciate today.

New Testament endorsements of The Tabernacle having lessons for us to learn today include:

Hebrews 8:5-6 NASB “… a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, “SEE,” He says, “THAT YOU MAKE all things ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN WHICH WAS SHOWN YOU ON THE MOUNTAIN.” But now He [Jesus] has obtained a more excellent ministry…”

Hebrews 8:5-6 NLT “…a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven. For when Moses was getting ready to build the Tabernacle, God gave him this warning: “Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.” But now Jesus, our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior…a far better covenant…better promises.”

You should also check out Hebrews 9:1-12 where the verses tell us that the Tabernacle and system of worship are symbols and illustrations for us today. “…a symbol for the present time.” If something illustrates Christ for us – then we would be the losers if we didn’t closely look at Holy Spirit-directed illustrations.

If something illustrates Christ for us – then we would be the losers if we didn’t closely look at Holy Spirit directed illustrations.

Historical Background Sketch

Genesis ends with Abraham’s descendants living in Egypt, where Joseph lived. Jacob’s extended family at the end of Genesis had grown to seventy in Egypt. Three hundred and fifty years later, there were approximately 2.5 million of them still living there – but no longer in the good favour of a Pharaoh. New pharaohs treated them harshly as slaves and kept them in brutal bondage.

Through a series of spectacular events where God displayed His power to Egypt, under the leadership of Moses, God brought these 2.5 million people out of bondage across the Red Sea and was taking them to a new land and making them a unique nation. A mass exodus. That’s a study in itself.

In their travels, they arrived at Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses what we know as the Ten Commandments. No sooner had God given these commandments than the people miserably rebelled against God. The golden calf fiasco. If keeping the Ten Commandments and obeying all the rules was not possible – in what way could people approach God and be accepted? That’s the big question for today too!

Enter – the Tabernacle

Exodus 25:1,8 NASB “Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying … Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them…”