ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #61 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> What did the tabernacle actually look like? >> Joshua, we were reading all of those details in Exodus Chapter 40. And I'll admit that it's hard to get a mental picture sometimes of what the tabernacle or the temple for that matter later in the Old Testament actually looked like. So I think it's valuable for us to make sure that we have at least a general picture in mind of the tabernacle. So I've got a slide for you here. You can see a view of the tabernacle and what it looks like. And I want to call your attention to the key features, the ones that you should see and know. First, the overall size of the tabernacle, 100 cubits, about 150 feet long. That's roughly half the length of a football field long. And 50 cubits wide. That's -- 50 cubits is 75 feet wide. So it's roughly -- that's half the width of its length. That's not so important. Within the fence that establishes the perimeter of the tabernacle there are several things that you should be able to identify. Moving from the outside in, in the center of the courtyard is the bronze altar. This is the altar where most of the sacrifices would have taken place. So it's an important place where the people would have come for their -- to make their sacrifices. There's also closer to the tent -- from that between the altar and the tent there is the basin, sometimes the Great Sea as it's called. The large water basin there, which is an important feature of the tabernacle. Then we come to the tent. That is the -- sort of the central -- not geographically central but theologically central part of the tabernacle. And in this tent there are several elements that are also part of the temple later on. Looking at this on the north side or the top side of the picture as we're looking at it, there is a little table, a golden table, which contains the bread. And the bread symbolizes the presence of Yahweh. So it's the bread of the presence. And this table is an important symbol of Yahweh's presence there. Another important symbol is sort of on the south side at roughly the same place in the tabernacle. And that is the lamp stand, which is also made of gold. This land stand usually pictured sort of like a traditional Jewish menorah with the light on the stand as another symbol of God's presence there. The third thing in the outer part of the tent is the altar of incense. And this is the place where incense is burned in the tabernacle. And when incense is burned, of course, not only is the aroma given off and the aroma is, again, a symbol of God's presence, but also the smoke that rises from the incense is a sample of the prayers and offerings of God rising to him in heaven. So in our liturgy, you know, we have the "Let my prayers rise before you" incense. So the incense is an important symbol. It both represents the presence of God there in the midst of its people and also God is receiving -- in his presence receiving the prayers of the people who rise to him. So there's -- all this stuff in the tabernacle is all very valuable theological symbolism. And you know, it's unfortunate that we -- that modern American Christians in particular have tended to sort of lose touch with these symbols that are so important to the Old Testament and sort of graphically valuable to us today. The inner part of the tent then is a small area about 15 feet square, 10 cubits square, that we usually describe with the phrase the holy of holies. Now that phrase "holy of holies" is the Hebrew way of saying the most holy place. The technical name for this in Hebrew is the ***dabere. And the dabere is that part of the tabernacle or the temple that is the place where God dwells. It is the place where the presence of God actually resides. Outside that in the outer part we have symbols of God's presence. Because remember, not even the priest could go into the holy of holies. So they have out there various symbols of God's presence. But here in the holy of holies we have the reality of God's presence as he dwells in the midst of his people. And so this is the place where God dwells with them. And so as we come to the end of the book of Exodus -- and this is not only the end of the book. It's obviously the last passage we're going to read since it's the very end -- the building of the tabernacle is a way of sort of bringing together, tying together at the end all of the theological themes of the Old Testament and culminating with the fact that the promise of God's presence that he had given them implied throughout the first part of the book and becomes explicit in the second part of the book. And especially as we saw in Chapters 33 and 34 that now becomes a concrete reality for them. And so this is a very important theological expression, even though it's kind of dry reading for us as we read it today. This is sort of unaccepting. It's kind of hard to sort of grit your teeth and read through this. But we need to look beyond the sort of boring words and realize the value of the theological statement that's being made here: That God has come to dwell with his people. And it's in the dwelling of the presence of God with his people that they find their identity as Moses pointed out in Chapter 3 and also their security as the people of God. So here earlier in the course when we were talking about going up on the mountain, we talked about this concept of sacred space. Here in the tabernacle and later on in the temple we get this theology of sacred space enacted in the space. So as we move from outside the area to within the fence and then to within the tabernacle or tent proper and then to the holy of holies, we get sort of increasing access to the presence of God. And we can see that in the symbolism outside. The bronze altar and basin aren't really symbols of God's presence. But they are the place where the people offer things to God. On the farthest outside there's no sort of contact with God's presence at all. Inside the fence they have the places where they can offer things to God. Once we move into the tent, we get symbols of God's presence. And then in the holy of holies, we get God's presence in reality. So the tabernacle design, which is repeated later in the temple later in the Old Testament, enacts in concrete reality this theology of the sacred space in which the people of Israel are guaranteed God's grace through his abiding presence with them. So this presence of God with the people is what the tabernacle is all about. And the grace that flows out of his presence to the people so that they can be confident of the forgiveness of their sins, even though they can't keep the -- you know, can't keep the covenant perfectly. We probably should mention just one thing in wrapping this up about the temple. That is this architecture of the tabernacle. And later the temple is really common throughout the ancient near east. This design of a church to put it that way is pretty much the same in Israel as it is in other places. They also had this concept of sacred space. The difference as we saw early in the course is this: That in the ancient near east, these places that are like the holy of holies are thought to be sacred intrinsically because there are points at which nature and the realm of the divine sort of co-mingle. So they are intrinsically holy. And that's why the magical rights can be carried out there. Because there's access at that point to the realm of the gods. But here in Israel the theology is different. This place is holy. But remember, God shows mercy to whom he shows mercy and grace to whom he shows grace. God can't be cold. It's holy only because God chooses to reveal himself there in the gracious act of his presence among his people. And that's why God's presence with them is always in these cases an expression of God's grace toward Israel and also as Christ is the incarnation in human flesh of the tabernacle as the New Testament makes clear. His incarnation is an expression of God's grace toward us. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***