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“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.”
Exodus 25:8–9 NASB95
God desired to live among mankind and the readings of Parashat Tetzaveh are a continuation of God’s instructions to Moses about how this dwelling would be built, who would enter it and when and how the servants in that dwelling would dress and comport themselves.
God warns the people that although He has commissioned a home for himself among them, He is adamant that He can’t be physically represented in any way.
“So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, so that you do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water below the earth.” (Deuteronomy 4:15–18 NAS95)
Many of our brothers and sisters have a grave misunderstanding of what the tabernacle was and what it meant. The tabernacle and the ceremonies conducted within it were NOT a means of salvation.
God took the people of Israel out of Egypt for one main reason:
““I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God. “They shall know that I am the LORD their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them; I am the LORD their God.” (Exodus 29:45–46 NAS95)
The purpose of the tabernacle was so God could live with mankind. If that is the case, why is it so ornate and elaborate? The Torah goes into great detail about the design and building of this tabernacle. When you look at the measurements of it, you notice that it is not very large.
One main thing you notice is that there is only one entrance into the tabernacle, only one door. The first thing you see when you enter the tabernacle is an altar, which was to have a burnt offering upon it. There was another altar behind it, which was the incense altar which was also burning regularly.
The priests were dedicated with the application of blood on their right ear, their right thumb and their right toe. What they hear, what they do and where they walk were to be sanctified and made holy.
Between the altar of burnt offer and the altar of incense was a laver with water, which was for the priests to wash themselves. They had to wash themselves before starting their service. All of these to teach them that they are not holy in and of themselves, they were holy and set apart because they were made so by God.
The idea that blood brings about cleansing doesn’t make any sense in the physical realm. Anyone who has to deal with blood will tell you that it easily stains whatever comes into contact with it. Blood attracts flies and vermin when left alone. Blood, as you can watch in crime shows, will leave evidence unless it’s cleaned away.
What happened in Sinai didn’t stay in Sinai. What they did and what they learned at Sinai accompanied the children of Israel. When they arrived at Sinai, the people were strictly warned not to approach the mountain. They were not attending a concert or a regular party. The people were not allowed to go up the mountain at all. There were some who were permitted to go up the mountain for a short distance but only Moses was permitted to climb all the way to the top. This pattern of hierarchy at Sinai was repeated in the design of the tabernacle.
Hear it and weep!
How many times have you been brought to tears by reading an architectural plan? Ezekiel is a prophet who bridged between the generation before the exile and the generation that suffered through the exile. He told the people why God was sending them to exile, how they would experience the exile and what would happen when they returned from their divine time out.
Ezekiel is telling them the “now what?” of the exile. He is giving a glimpse of the future for us. Many messianic prophesies have a both now and not yet component. They seem to speak of Israel but then they seem to speak of someone else, the Messiah. There’s a literal and spiritual component to the fulfillment of many of these prophesies, which can confuse us as we are studying them.
The High Priests clothing, for example, the two stones on his shoulders have the names of 6 tribes on each shoulder. These represent the High Priest bearing the burden of the tribes on his shoulders before the Lord.
The description of Ezekiel’s temple should make us weep, but does it?
We see the progression from the tabernacle to Solomon’s temple, then a 70 year gap until Zerubabbel’s temple and Herod’s temple. It was Zerubbabel’s temple that was desecrated by the Selucids and then rededicated by the Maccabees. Herod was able to refurbish it with lots of money from the Romans and that lasted for about 100 years altogether until it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
The Temple of Solomon was built on a similar footprint although much larger than the tabernacle had.
The tabernacle built at Sinai is about 1/4 the size of an American football field.….. Ezekiel’s Temple, if it had been built, would have had the largest footprint of all. Even Herod’s temple would be dwarfed by Ezekiel’s Temple.
There are a couple of differences though. Ezekiel’s temple is square rather than rectangular and the altar is smack dab in the middle of the temple and there are three gates, three points of entry to Ezekiel’s Temple rather than just one gate. In Ezekiel’s Temple, all the nation of the world will come to worship there, not just the people of Israel.
Ezekiel’s temple will not be built until the Messiah Himself builds it.
We have an altar and let us go to Him outside the camp!
“We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp.” (Hebrews 13:10–11 NAS95)
There are some passages that reflect on this idea of the altar which those who served in the tabernacles can’t eat.
“‘The priest shall offer them up in smoke on the altar as an offering by fire to the LORD; it is a guilt offering. ‘Every male among the priests may eat of it. It shall be eaten in a holy place; it is most holy. ‘The guilt offering is like the sin offering, there is one law for them; the priest who makes atonement with it shall have it.” (Leviticus 7:5–7 NAS95)
This is a participation in Heaven’s work on earth. The priests were to remember that they were to be sustained by the gifts at the altar. The High Priest is called to direct things but the High Priest is not the Boss. God is the boss. This is not how most of the cultures of the Ancient Near East operated. In all the other nations surrounding Israel, the High Priest was the most important figure in the nation. The fact that the High Priest was answerable to God is unusual amongst their neighbors. When Nadab and Abihu came into the holy place uninvited, their arrogance killed them.
“Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men; you judge what I say. Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread. Look at the nation Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices sharers in the altar? What do I mean then? That a thing sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than He, are we?” (1 Corinthians 10:14–22 NAS95)
The problem that Israel had was that they tried to partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. They tried to take the practices of the nations around them and mingled them with the instructions of the Lord, even though God had told them explicitly not to bring the practices of the nation into His worship.
Making the Dwelling place and those who serve in it holy requires a massive separation from the world. In Leviticus 4:21 and Leviticus 16:27-28, we are told that there were sacrifices that had to take place outside the camp, and were not sacrificed within the temple precincts, which is a conundrum.
Some try to downplay who Yeshua is and what He accomplished on the cross. Our “pattern” from the Tabernacle shows us who He is and what He did for us. The most important work to sanctify the tabernacle and those who work in it had to take place outside the tabernacle, not within it.
“Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come. Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” (Hebrews 13:12–16 NAS95)
The blood of the Messiah is what removes and covers sin, not what happens inside the tabernacle. What happens in the tabernacle is a pattern of what Yeshua did outside the tabernacle.
When Yeshua appears to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, there’s a lot that He had to reveal to them and discuss with them, going through from Genesis and all through the Torah. All of it was recorded to reveal the Messiah. Israel did not make themselves holy, It was God who made them holy, who set them apart from the nation. If you lose focus of your mission, of the reason you exist, then your mission will inevitably fail.
When the people of Israel lost sight of their mission, of their office as an nation of priests, and found themselves preferring to act as the nation around them acted, God had to punish them and remind them their real job description. They forgot that they had good news to share with the people of the nations.
The book of Hebrews shows us why the tabernacle was so important and what it represents. The Messiah is an essential part of the Tabernacle, He is not an afterthought. …Ezekiel was a priest and he knew that the architecture of the Temple God was showing him was not like the temple he had worked and served in before.
The tabernacle and the temple were out of commission during various periods of Israel’s history and all of these were for the same reason. The priesthood had become rotten, they had forgotten their duty to bring the offerings of the people to God. They were harassing the women and abusing the people who brought their offerings. The people started boycotting the tabernacle because of the horrible behavior of the priests and God had to clean them out. The priests had started acting with the same contemptuous attitude as the priests of the nations acted.
Even with all of this, there were gentiles who saw God in His righteousness and purity, such as Rahab, and Ruth, who put their trust in the God of Israel, but when the people of Israel blasphemed God’s name and did not esteem Him, God had to punish the people and clean His house.
The offerings outside of the camp are so important, and without them, the work of the Temple is impossible. This is why Paul’s call for us to meet Yeshua by going outside the camp is so profound. What happened outside the camp, which was the death, resurrection and ascension of Yeshua was the most event in Israel’s history.
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
(Romans 12:1–2 NAS95)
How do we know what kind of offerings are acceptable to God? We know these from the Torah. We bring what is special, what is perfect. We don’t bring whatever we want to bring. We don’t bring what is decaying or rotten or those things that would otherwise go to the garbage dump. We are to bring to God what is new, beautiful, healthy, precious and valuable.
At Sinai, God presented Himself to the people and made a covenant with them, but they broke the covenant with the Golden Calf, so He renewed the covenant with them, but again, they lacked in faith, refusing to go into the Promised Land. That first generation had to die in the wilderness so the new generation, who had more faith could enter in.
There is no other way to enter the tabernacle than to go through the door, which is the Messiah. We can’t enter into God’s presence without transformation.
Let’s conclude by reviewing Ezekiel 43:7 in several different translation. The Aramaic Targums and the Greek Septuagint are important because we can see in these translations that the Holy Apostles were not just playing fast and loose with the scriptures that referred to the Messiah but accurately reading the words of truth.
He said to me, “Son of man, this is the place of My throne and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell among the sons of Israel forever.” (NASB95)
And He said to me, “Son of Adam, this is the place of the abode of My glorious throne, and this is the place of the abode of the habitation of My Shekinah, where My Shekinah dwells among the Children of Israel forever…” (Targum)
And he said to me, “You have seen, son of man, the place of my throne and the place of the print of my feet, in which my name shall encamp in the midst of the house of Israel forever…” (New English Translation of the Septuagint)
Those who wrote the Targums and the Septuagint had a difficult time with the idea that God Himself would live on the earth so they developed these circumlocutions, such as the shekinah, or the print of His feet, rather than His feet directly planted on the earth.
The Tabernacle is all about the Messiah, as we are told in John 1:1-14. This is a picture of the Messiah wrapped in and embodied by the Tabernacle. This should not surprise us at all. Rather than saying what God can’t do, we should believe what He said about Himself, what He actually did and what He said He will do in the future.
Summary: Tammy