Exodus 25-27

I. Introduction

Whether out of curiosity or because a professor required it, I’ve been in a lot of different worship settings. I’ve been in a Methodist church. I’ve been in a Lutheran church. I’ve been in a Greek Orthodox church. I’ve been in a Baptist church. I’ve been in a predominantly African-American church. I’ve been in a charismatic church where people waved flags and danced in the aisle, and I’ve been in a catholic mass where people followed the liturgy of kneeling and rising and reciting creeds and prayers all in unison. And this is just my experience in Christian churches. There is, of course, even more diversity. In our consumeristic world, you could even say, there are options. Do you want a contemporary service or a traditional one? Do you want a church with great children’s ministries? Do you want everybody to wear suits and ties with their hands by their sides or be comfortable enough to wear their Seattle Seahawks jerseys? There are so many options, that-just like your Burger King meal- it seems like you can have church your way, too. And, sadly, many Christians and many churches have adopted this mindset, treating church like just another consumer product.

But as we look at our passage for today, which is Exodus 25-27, I hope we will recognize how radically different God’s prescription of worship was for Israel; I hope you will learn something about the heart of God and what it means to be in a relationship with him and worship him. Essentially, I want us to understand the difference between having God on our terms and having worship our way and getting to have a relationship with God and worship the him on his terms- as it’s set forth in passages like this one.

Now, as you’re turning to Exodus 25, which I think is on page 65 of the black bibles in front of you, I just want to acknowledge that this passage is a little dry. The instructions for the building of the tabernacle are detailed and somewhat repetitive. Moreover, it might seem irrelevant since we don’t worship at the tabernacle, but this section is a part of the backbone of OT religion that ultimately points to Jesus. So, if we want to know Jesus better and worship God better, then we need to understand the OT better. Moreover, Paul said that the OT Scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation (2 Tim. 3:15). By the end of this morning, I think you’ll appreciate what Paul meant, and how this passage does that.

When we come to Exodus 25, we should recall that the people are at Mt. Sinai, out in the desert. They had just confirmed the covenant with their God (24:3), and Moses had gone up onto the mountain to receive the stone tablets and further instruction from the Lord (24:18). Read with me, starting in 25:1. The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel, that they take for me a contribution. From every man whose heart moves him you shall receive the contribution for me. 3 And this is the contribution that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, 4 blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, goats’ hair, 5 tanned rams’ skins, goatskins (or maybe the skins of some aquatic mammal like a dolphin), acacia wood, 6 oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, 7 onyx stones, and stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece . . . 8 And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. 9 Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it (Ex. 25:1-9).

This passage is like a preface to the rest of chapters 25-27 because it issues the call for the Israelites to offer the materials necessary to build the sanctuary where God would uniquely manifest his presence, the tabernacle where he would dwell among his people. And the rest of chapters 25-27 describe what that tabernacle would be like, what would be inside it, what it would be made of, what would be outside of it. It’s actually pretty specific in places, and we don’t have the time to read this whole passage this morning. So, hopefully you saw my request in the newsletter and were able to read the passage this weekend, but if not, you can read through it later. But if you look at the section headings, you can get a general idea of what the section covers. It gives instructions for the ark of the covenant, which was a chest where the stone tablets with the 10 Commandments were kept. And God was going to manifest his presence over the ark of the covenant. Then, you’ve got a table where the bread of the presence was kept and the lampstand, which was the menorah, if you think of Hanukkah. Then, God gives the instructions for the actual building of the tabernacle. Then, in chapter 27, God gave the instructions for a bronze altar and the courtyard that would surround the whole tabernacle complex.

Anyway, this passage is a description of how the people were to build a sanctuary, a holy dwelling place for God, a tabernacle or tent and its furnishings, which was essentially the apparatus for the worship they were to give God under this covenant.

II. God’s Presence

And one of the first things we learn about this worship structure and Israelite worship, is that it was made possible because of God’s holy presence among the people. God was going to dwell in this tabernacle. And that’s why Philip Ryken is right to call this the most important building in history. It’s not as iconic as the White House, or as beautiful as the Taj Mahal, or as imposing as a gothic cathedral, or as impressive as the Burj Khalifa. Yet, the tabernacle, along with the temple, which was just a permanent version of this tabernacle, is more important than any of these, because it alone was specifically designed by God to teach God’s people how a holy God could dwell with his sinful people. The tabernacle, and therefore the passages of Scripture reporting the design of the tabernacle are important because they teach us about how God dwelt in the midst of his people. God lived among his people. And that reality, God’s presence, is what make worship and a relationship with God possible.

And what a gracious condescension this was. This wasn’t compulsory for God. There was nothing he needed that forced him to dwell among them. God, who made the world and everything in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth, does not [need to] live in temples made by man (Acts 17:24). As Isaiah said, thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool” (Isa. 66:1). God didn’t need a couch to crash on. He didn’t need a roof over his head to shelter him from the elements. Unlike the fake gods of the ancient Near East, God wasn’t dependent on his worshippers to feed him and care for him. You know, ancient Near Eastern religion (so the gods of Egypt and Canaan and Babylon, etc.) was all about a symbiotic relationship between the gods and humans. The gods got tired of doing everything themselves, so they made humans as their servants to provide food and drink and housing. And as long as the gods got what they wanted, they would send rain and fruitful harvests and provide security. This quid-pro-quo, symbiotic relationship is why the pagan nations built temples for their gods. They built temples to house their idols, and they served them meals, all so that their gods would meet their needs.

But Yahweh’s relationship with Israel wasn’t like that because Yahweh wasn’t like those gods. Yahweh didn’t need a house. He didn’t need sacrifices for food. The table for the bread of the Presence wasn’t to feed God. The Lord didn’t eat that bread. The priests ate it (Lev. 24:9)! God was completely independent of Israel and was graciously choosing to make himself present with them. So, worship isn’t doing a bunch of rituals or singing songs or praying because God needs us to do it. Rather, God chose to dwell among his people with utter freedom and utter sovereignty, choosing- not to use them as slaves but- to bless them. And so the omnipotent and immaterial God, who fills the earth with his presence, chose to dwell in a tent, to manifest his glory in this tabernacle in order to remind his people that he was with them. He did it to serve them, to give them that reminder, so that they would not forget that their God was with them. This was a gracious condescension.

III. God’s Presence is Holy

And if their God was going to dwell with them in a tent, that tent was going to be holy. It would be a sanctuary, a holy place. Now, I came to Hope Church in the middle of this Exodus series, so I don’t know for sure, but I imagine you guys have probably talked about what the word holy means, since it’s come up before in the book. For example, when Moses approached the burning bush, God told him to remove his sandals since he was standing on holy ground (Ex. 3:5). But if you’re new or simply just need a refresher, our tendency is to understand the word “holy” as roughly synonymous with “righteous” or “good.” We think of it in moral terms. While that’s not entirely wrong, it doesn’t quite cover the full range of the word’s meaning. How can a plot of land or a tent be morally good? They can’t. They’re amoral, and yet they can be holy, because to be holy means to be set apart as sacred or for a special purpose. Maybe some of you have special dinnerware or china that comes out only on important occasions. It’s not for common, everyday use, but it’s been set apart for a special use. It is in a sense, holy. And it’s the same way with the tabernacle and the priests who would work in it. They are set apart for the Lord and his purposes.

If the Lord, in his holiness was going to set apart a special tent in which to manifest his presence and glory, that tabernacle needed to reflect his holiness. His presence made that tent into a sanctuary, and God’s instructions for the tabernacle are meant to signify and symbolize his holiness. So, how does it do that? How does the tabernacle’s design communicate God’s holiness?

Let’s begin with the materials first. If you just consider the supplies that God calls for, you can tell this is meant to be a special building. The amount of metal (bronze, silver, and gold) should tip us off that we’re not dealing with the ordinary but with the ornate. I doubt many of the Israelites had lampstands made of solid gold in their tents, yet the furnishings of the tabernacle were golden. Even the frames of the tabernacle are made of wood plated with gold! But it’s not just that because the Lord also requests costly fabrics. It wasn’t just the animal skins, but also the blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and fine linen. Those wouldn’t have been cheap. They weren’t mass produced in sweatshops. They were valuable. Then, in verse 7, God even asks for rare gem stones for the priestly garments. The materials listed in these verses weren’t run-of-the-mill supplies, and their value underscores the holiness of the space and the holiness of the who would dwell in it.

But there’s actually a sort of holiness-gradient to the tabernacle. If you read the passage carefully, you’ll notice that God begins with the holiest parts first and moves outward. You’ve got the ark above which God would dwell in the Most Holy Place, and then on the other side of the veil, you have the Holy Place with the table and lampstand. Then, he talks about the actual building itself, followed by the altar outside and the courtyard that surrounds the whole complex. There’s this progression from the locus of God’s presence in the Most Holy Place to the Holy Place to the structures surrounding it.

And as you travel outward along this gradient you can actually see that the values of the metals decrease as well. Inside the tabernacle, we could see a bunch of gold: the solid gold lampstand and the gold-plated ark and table. As you move to the building itself, the frames of the tabernacle are gold-plated, but they’re set in bases made of silver. Then moving beyond the tabernacle, you’ve got the altar, which was to be overlaid with bronze, and its utensils were made of bronze also. And whereas the pillars and beams for the tabernacle were to be gold-plated and set on silver bases, the pillars for the outer courtyard were bronze, with only some silver hooks and fillets. So, there’s a discernible downgrade- not because God’s worried they’re going to run out of gold, so he’ll just have to settle for bronze but- because he wants to signify that the place where he chooses to manifest his presence is most holy.

That’s why God repeatedly tells Moses to build it exactly as he is shown on the mountain (25:9, 40; 26:30). It’s why there’s a veil separating the holy place from the most holy place, and nobody could cross that veil except the high priest once a year. It’s why God instructed the Israelites to put rings on the ark of the covenant and to carry it by sliding poles through it, so that they wouldn’t touch it. And when someone did touch it in 2 Sam. 6, God struck that man dead on the spot.

It is because God is holy, and the place where he dwells is holy, and the people of Israel needed to understand that, if they were going to be in covenant with him. If they were going to be his people, they needed to understand that. If they were to fulfill his plan to use them as a kingdom of priests and a light to the nations, they needed to understand that. They needed to be holy like God is holy.

This reality defines the story of the OT. The people did not respect God’s holiness, and they were not holy themselves. Rather than set themselves apart from the idolatrous nations and worship God alone, they, like adulterers ran after other so-called gods. They profaned God’s name, his temple, his law, and his land. So, just like he did with the Canaanites who defiled his land, God kicked Israel out of his land, raising up nations like Assyria and Babylon to conquer and deport and exile the people from his holy land. That’s the story of the OT. You can read the history of it in the historical books, and you can see the warnings God gave in the prophetic books. The whole history of Israel is dominated by the reality that God is holy. He’s not some Santa Claus up in heaven chortling at our peccadillos, but a raging fire that will consume our sin. And the history of the OT is a testimony of just what happens when unholy people profane the presence of a holy God.

So, what does that mean for us? If you and I claim to be God’s people; if we dare to come here today and worship him, then what about our sin? As the author of Hebrews said, If they (the Israelites) did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven (Heb. 12:25). So, how can we dare come into the presence of the holy one when we are so sinful?

IV. God’s Atonement

It is because God made a way. He knows who we are. He knows we are sinners, and he even knew that Israel would break their covenant and be exiled from the land before they even made it into the land.

But remember, it was God who chose to come to Israel. It was he who decided to dwell among them, so he was going to make it possible. If holiness means that God is set apart from our sin, then we must be cleansed of our sins and forgiven in order to enter God’s holy presence. To put it another way, a relationship with God and worship in God’s holy presence requires the propitiation, or appeasement, of God’s wrath. It demands that atonement be made for our sin. Something must be done to satisfy God’s wrath in order to reconcile us to God, if we are going to enter his presence for worship. And he lays the foundation for how he would deal with their sin problem in this very passage.

Our sin requires an atoning sacrifice. Bloodshed. Indeed, the author of Hebrews says, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb. 9:22). And here, in Exodus 25-27, God provided the place for those sacrifices. The how-to of the sacrifices comes in Leviticus where we can read about the guilt offerings and the sin offerings, but all of these sacrifices involved the altar that God commanded Moses to build in chapter 27. That altar was God’s provision through which the Israelites could be cleansed and have their sins atoned for.

But the altar isn’t the only place where God makes provision for their sin in this passage. In 25:17, God instructs them to make a mercy-seat of pure gold as a lid for the ark of the covenant. Now, you might be wondering what in the world a mercy-seat is, which is a good question since there’s been a lot of scholarly ink spilled trying to understand this word. The ESV translates it “mercy seat,” which is kind of the classic English protestant translation going back for centuries, but I actually think the NIV’s translation of “atonement cover” serves better since it indicates that this gold-plated slab was both the lid or cover for the ark. And it makes it clear that this word is related to the Hebrew root for “atonement.” This lid was the place where atonement would be made for the people.

In Leviticus 16, we can read about the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, as it’s sometimes called, and a lot of it takes place right here with this atonement cover. The Day of Atonement was the one day every year where the high priest would take a bull, two goats, and two rams, and after bathing and putting on his special priestly garments, he would make atonement for himself and his household by sacrificing the bull and takings its blood back behind the veil and sprinkling the blood on the atonement cover seven times (Lev. 16:11, 14). Then, he would take one of the goats and do the same thing to make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins (Lev. 16:15-16). Then, the high priest would take the other goat and lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness . . . the goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area (Lev. 16:21-22). And, finally he would sacrifice the two rams as burnt offerings to the Lord, one for himself and one for the people. And this whole day, full of bloody sacrifices and a scapegoat, was to make atone for the people, to cleanse them, so that they would be clean before the LORD from all their sins (Lev. 16:30).

The bronze altar and the golden atonement cover were the instruments of God in dealing with the sin that would otherwise bar his people from entering into God’s presence for worship and relationship.

But we know that this sacrificial system was just a short-lived shadow. God’s provision for their sin was just provisional until the real and lasting solution of Christ came. The author of Hebrews says For since the law is but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (Heb. 10:1-4). The sacrificial system was just the shadow of the good things to come in Christ, and Paul himself makes a connection between the atonement cover and Jesus Christ, teaching us that whereas the atonement cover or mercy seat is the place where atonement for sin was made, Jesus is the person through whom atonement was made.

In Romans 3, Paul was describing the righteousness that is ours through faith. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:21-26). Now, you might wonder what that has to do with the tabernacle, and it’s actually hard to tell because of a translation decision in the ESV. The word translated “propitiation” in 3:25 is the exact same Greek word used in the Greek translation of the OT to refer to the atonement cover. When it’s used in Hebrews 9:5, it’s referring to the atonement cover or mercy seat. So, it’s clear that, in the Bible, this word refers to that mercy seat/atonement cover. In fact, the NIV footnotes this, and the NET actually translates the verse as “God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith” (Rom. 3:25). So, while it’s true, and certainly smoother to say that Jesus is put forward as our propitiation or atoning sacrifice, Paul is trying to link Jesus to the atonement cover and the rich theology of the Day of Atonement that we just discussed, so that we would understand that Jesus is the place where atonement and propitiation occur.

Just like the priest (and by representation the whole nation) came to the atonement cover, over which God manifested his glory to receive atonement for sins, now the church must go to Jesus Christ, the new mercy seat, sprinkled with his own sacrificial blood, to be received by faith. And since Jesus is the true mercy seat, his sacrifice truly deals with our sin and propitiates God’s wrath, unlike the one in the tabernacle, which was the shadow to Christ’s substance.

V. Jesus

And let me underscore just how utterly transformative this is for our relationship with God. We’ve been talking this morning about the tabernacle, the place where God dwelt among his people and they could come to worship him. And we’ve talked about his holiness and the need for atonement in order for his people to worship in his presence. It’s amazing. He wasn’t just dwelling among them (which alone is extraordinary), but he did so in such a way that would communicate important truths to his people. An Israelite taking an early morning stroll through the camp would be able to look and see the tabernacle and remember that God was with him. As they brought their animals to be sacrificed, they were reminded of God’s holiness and his mercy. Ryken was right when he said this is the most important building in history.

It’s remarkable, but it falls far short of what we experience in Jesus Christ, because Jesus totally transforms our ability to relate to God and worship him. You don’t need to bring sacrificial animals to church. Your relationship to God is not mediated by a pastor or a sinful human priest, but by Jesus Christ, who is himself God. And God no longer limits his presence to a particular tabernacle or temple, requiring his people to make long pilgrimages to worship him. God’s not hidden in a tent that 99% of Israelites never went inside of. He’s not hidden behind a veil that only one man per year went past.

No! That veil was torn in two, and the barriers to your relationship with God are overcome. If you are in Christ, God has come to dwell with you (John 14:23). So, you are God’s temple (1 Cor. 3:16). Repeatedly, in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, Paul reminded them that they were the temple of the living God, even citing God’s promises from here in Exodus (2 Cor. 6:16). So, it’s not about where you worship, because your God dwells in here.

If you’re not a Christian, and you want to have this sort of relationship with God, he can come to dwell with you, too. And while it may not require all the precious metals and acacia wood and animal skins, this passage teaches us some important truths that remain unchanged. God wants to dwell among his people, but for sinful people to dwell with a holy God, there must be atonement. For you to know and dwell with God for eternity, your sin must be atoned for by the blood of Jesus shed for you and received by faith in Jesus Christ.

VI. Conclusion

As we end and wrap up this time in the passage, we’ve got to think about how this affects our lives. You know, this isn’t seven steps to a happy marriage or four principles for raising godly children. I just want to go back to what I said near the beginning of our time, and recall Paul’s statement that God’s word, and he was particularly thinking of our Old Testament, is able to make us wise for salvation. That means they are able to teach us and to prepare us, so that we can receive the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. And there’s nothing more important than that. And we never outgrow that.

And, moreover, this passage has taught us important truths about what it takes to have a relationship with God and be able to worship him. For sinners to worship a holy God requires an atoning sacrifice, and God himself became a man to make that sacrifice. God himself endured the humiliation of becoming a frail man and faced the shame of the cross to open a way for us to enter into God’s presence. Those truths are at the core of worship, and they should lead us to worship, and to approach our worship with a renewed attitude and perspective. It’s not about quibbles over the lesser matters of music style or dress or liturgical order, but it’s about coming into the presence of a holy God because Jesus Christ died to make atonement for our sin.

But worship isn’t limited to singing songs. Paul, in Romans 12:1, calls us to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Your life, what you do with your body, is a part of your worship. And Paul exhorts us to be holy, to flee sin that will defile us, so that the worship of our lives would be acceptable to God. In 2 Corinthians, after Paul reminded the people that they were a temple that God would dwell in, he wrote, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1). Amen. Let’s pray.