A Promise of Provision

1 Now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary. 2 For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread; this is called the holy place. 3 Behind the second veil there was a tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies, 4 having a golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod which budded, and the tables of the covenant; 5 and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat; but of these things we cannot now speak in detail. 6 Now when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship, 7 but into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance. (Hebrews 9:1–7)

Hebrews 9 compares the New Covenant to the Old Covenant, and the Tabernacle to the work of Jesus Christ. We’re taking a little time to think about the significance of the Tabernacle before taking a more detailed look at Hebrews 9.

Let’s review a little bit.

The Tabernacle was a place of communion

We’ve seen that the Tabernacle was a place of communion.

God had always intended to be WITH His people, going back to before creation ever happened. He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, spoke to Abraham and Sarah, and was with His people in the Tabernacle. The Lord Jesus is Immanuel, God-with-us.

The Tabernacle was a place of reconciliation

And we’ve seen that the Tabernacle was a place of reconciliation.

While the Tabernacle certainly depicted mankind’s separation from God, it also provided a temporary covering for sin, and promised eternal reconciliation between holy God and sinful man. Everything about the Tabernacle ultimately points to Jesus Christ, from the altar to the basin, from the bread of the presence to the lampstand, from the altar of incense to the Ark of the Covenant, and even the tent itself. It all points to Jesus.

And there is still more to understand about the Tabernacle.

The Tabernacle is a Place of Provision

The Tabernacle is a picture of God’s provision for our needs.

God Provides For Physical Needs

God Provided Their Physical Needs

It doesn’t take very long for us to become hungry, not more than a few hours since our last meal. One of the main tests of poverty is how many people go to bed hungry. According to the World Food Programme, 821 million people went to bed hungry last night.

Water is just as crucial. In fact, while we can live weeks on very little food, we cannot last very many days without water.

Of course, we understand this intellectually, but I doubt that any of us has ever experienced true starvation, or has been at death’s door because of thirst. None of us have ever gone days without food or water, and not known whether we would eat or drink again.

But the Hebrews in the wilderness faced these challenges almost as soon as they left Egypt.

Exodus 15:22-16:3

Turn with me to Exodus 15:22.

While you are turning there, let me set the context for you.

In Exodus 14 the Lord delivered the Hebrews through the Red Sea, and destroyed the army of Egypt.

In Exodus 15 Moses and others sing out a Psalm of praise to Yahweh for their deliverance.

The Lord Provided Water

22 Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter; therefore it was named Marah. 24 So the people grumbled at Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” (Exodus 15:22–24)

Let’s think about their water needs. They weren’t living in a temperate zone, but the desert. They had no air conditioning or shade; they were out in the open and moving. The Sinai Peninsula is always windy, rarely cloudy, and six months out of the year is above 80°. The average person outside in those conditions needs more than 1-1/2 gallons of water a day; that’s 12 pounds of water a day. They might have been able to carry enough water for 2 or 3 days, but no more.

So if they went two or three days without finding water, things quickly became desperate. These weren’t soldiers or survival specialists. They were families, little children, elderly people.

And when they did find water at Marah, they discovered that it was bitter – like sea water, so full of minerals that it was unsafe to drink.

25 Then [Moses] cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree; and he threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet. There He made for them a statute and regulation, and there He tested them. (Exodus 15:25)

The Lord purified the water so they could drink, and then they moved on.

27 Then they came to Elim where there were twelve springs of water and seventy date palms, and they camped there beside the waters. (Exodus 15:27)

At last, fresh water.

The Lord Provided Food

1 Then they set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt. 2 The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3 The sons of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (Exodus 16:1–3)

They’ve been out of Egypt now for 45 days, and their food has finally run out.

Here’s where they were living (Sinai peninsula image).

Here’s Nebraska (Nebraska image).

Here’s Nebraska with the Sinai peninsula at the same scale (Nebraska with Sinai superimposed).

What’s the main difference? Nebraska is GREEN, and that means, ultimately, food. Sinai is not green; no easy source of food.

By the way, here’s where they were going (Nebraska with Israel superimposed). And you can see that the majority of Israel was also green, and that meant the ability to grow food.

We can shake our heads at the ingratitude and disloyalty of the Hebrews, but the truth is that they were in desperate need of food. They had been gone from Egypt for 45 days, and had reached the end of their supplies.

To meet this need, the Lord provided food for them. In the evening, quail ran through the camp. And in the evening, there was a kind of flour on the ground, in enough abundance that the people were able to gather it in fairly large quantities, about 1-1/2 quarts per person every day. The people called it manna, which is a Hebrew word meaning, “What is it?” They continued to eat manna, supernaturally provided by Yahweh, during the entire 40 years in the wilderness.

God Knew What They Needed

The very first words God said to man are found in Genesis 2:16,

Genesis 2:16 NASB95

The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;

Every living thing must eat to survive. That’s by God’s design. It’s not a result of the fall. It’s important to understand that the Lord never blamed His people for being hungry or thirsty, but for accusing His character.

Long after the Lord provided water and quail and manna in the wilderness, the Lord Jesus fed thousands on more than one occasion.

God knows what we need to survive.

The Table of Showbread

How does all this relate to the Tabernacle?

God gave Moses instructions to a build a table for the holy place, called “the table of showbread” or “the table of the bread of the Presence.” The instructions included making bowls and jars of pure to hold wine.

Numbers 4:7

7 “Over the table of the bread of the Presence they shall also spread a cloth of blue and put on it the dishes and the pans and the sacrificial bowls and the jars for the drink offering, and the continual bread shall be on it.” (Numbers 4:7)

The bread of the Presence were twelve large loaves of unleavened bread, made from a specific recipe including about 12 cups of flour, that reminded the people of Israel that their God was with them, and certainly was a prophetic sign of Jesus Christ, who is the Bread of Life. There was also a hin of wine; a hin equated to about one gallon.

So on the table of showbread were twelve large loaves of bread, each one a full ration for a man who was working hard all day, and a measure of wine, enough for twelve men to have a full cup each.

As the Lord Jesus said, quoting Deuteronomy, man shall not live by bread alone. We truly do need more than food for our bodies – we also need the Word of God – but we also do need food. The Lord never denies that. No reasonable person would deny that.

The Tabernacle is a picture of God meeting our most basic needs for food and shelter. He met their needs miraculously while they were in the wilderness. The miracles of food and water ended once they entered the promised land, but they continued to place bread and wine on the table of showbread, as long as there was a Tabernacle or a Temple.

Every time the priests entered the holy place they were reminded not only of the holiness of God, but also His care and tender concern over even the basics of human life.

But God provided more than food and drink.

God Provided His Word

Exodus 25:22

The Lord said to Moses in Exodus 25:22,

22 “[In the holy of holies] I will meet with you; and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak to you about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel. (Exodus 25:22)

Exodus 33:11

And Exodus 33:11 says,

11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. (Exodus 33:11)

Scripture didn’t just drop down out of heaven ready to go to the printers. God communicated to men in a unique way. Moses received the Ten Commandments, the summary of the Law, on Mount Sinai, but the riches of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were given in the Tabernacle.

Hebrews 1:1-2

Hebrews 1:1-2 says,

1 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

Matthew 4:4

Do you remember what Jesus said during His temptation?

4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ ” (Matthew 4:4)

Both bread and wine, and the Word of God, were provided in the Tabernacle. Both were prophetic pointers to the man Christ Jesus, who is the Word of God made flesh, and the Bread of Life. Jesus came as the final, perfect, complete revelation of God to mankind. This is why we reject all other claims to revelation and wisdom.

God Provided Everything They Needed

We need food and water. We need spiritual nourishment as well.

Peter writes this,

Second Peter 1:2-3

2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. (2 Peter 1:2–3)

Peter didn’t invent this idea out of his own imagination. He saw it in the Tabernacle, and heard it directly from the Lord Jesus. God provides everything that we need for life and godliness, not just spiritual life, but physical life as well.

Bringing It Home

God Is Our Provider

And we see it today, as the Lord continues to care for us and provide for us.

Farmers are able to grow grain and vegetables and fruit, and raise animals for food, because God’s promise remains true. He has provided what we need for life.

And we can open the pages of Scripture and read and see and hear the voice of God, Truth itself, Genesis to Revelation. The Lord has preserved the Scriptures for us through thousands of years of history.

The Word of Life.

The Bread of Life.

Matthew 6:25-33

Listen to the Lord Jesus as we close; He applies this message to our lives.

25 “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27 And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28 And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31 Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:25–33)