The Tabernacle Theme

This morning we are going to trace the temple theme through Scripture.

-When we hear the word tabernacle, we usually think about Moses, curtains, poles, priests, and sacrifices.

-But the word itself simply means a tent—a place where someone lives.

-So what is the tabernacle doing at the end of the Bible?

-John hasn’t suddenly gone back to the Law of Moses here.

-It is finishing a story that began on the first pages of Scripture.

-The Bible tells us how people who were driven away from God’s presence can live with him again.

-The tabernacle and temple are not side issues. They give shape to the whole story.

-How can God dwell with us?

-The first sanctuary was not built with boards or stone. It was planted by God.

-Eden was where God met humanity. Adam and Eve lived in His presence and enjoyed fellowship with Him.

-Before sin, the sound of God walking was welcome. After sin, it produced fear.

-That is what sin does. It turns the presence we were made for into the presence from which we hide.

-God rescues Abraham’s children from slavery in Egypt and brings them to Mount Sinai.

-He enters a covenant with them. Then He says something astonishing.

-Why build the tabernacle?

-God wants to live among His people.

-Israel’s tents surround one tent in the center of the camp: God’s tent.

-The details matter because sinful people cannot invent the terms on which they approach a holy God. They must build it according to His pattern.

-Generations later, David lives in a palace while the ark remains in a tent.

-David wants to build God a house. God gives that work to David’s son Solomon.

-A temple is the permanent form of a tabernacle. Israel is settled in the land, so the dwelling of their King is settled among them.

-The temple expands the garden imagery: carved palm trees, flowers, pomegranates, cherubim, and a great bronze sea.

-Second Kings 25 records the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in sober, almost unemotional detail.

-Ezekiel shows us what happened before the walls fell.

-In his vision, God’s glory moves slowly from the Most Holy Place to the threshold, from the threshold to the east gate, and from the city to the mountain east of Jerusalem.

-God does not leave in a hurry. The pauses in Ezekiel’s vision feel like a final, grieving look back.

-But holiness and settled rebellion cannot live together.

-Once the glory departs, the temple is only a building. Babylon can burn it like any other building.

-Israel is east of Eden again: outside the land, without a king, without a temple, and away from the visible presence of God.

-Had the plan failed? Can God and humanity actually dwell together?

-Man failed, but God’s promise to Abraham rested on God’s faithfulness.

-The same prophets who announced judgment also promised restoration.

-Ezekiel 37 says God will establish an everlasting covenant, set His sanctuary among His people forever, and once again say, “I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

-After the exile, God brings a remnant home.

-Under Zerubbabel and Joshua, stirred by Haggai and Zechariah, they rebuild the temple.

-Some who remembered Solomon’s temple wept because the new building seemed small and unimpressive.

-God tells them, in effect, “You work. I will provide the glory.”

-Yet Ezra records no cloud filling this second temple. There is no ark of the covenant and no visible glory moving in.

-The Old Testament closes with a rebuilt house and an unfulfilled expectation.

-That temple is plundered by the Roman General Pompey in 63 BC.

-The temple is standing, but the story is waiting for God to fill it in a greater way.

-Centuries later, Herod the Great turns that modest temple into one of the wonders of the ancient world.

-Its stones are massive. Its courts are magnificent. Its gold flashes in the sun.

-But Herod is an Edomite client-king building for his own glory.

-Construction continues for decades and is completed around AD 64. Six years later Rome destroys it.

-That temple had grandeur, but it did not have the glory Haggai was talking about.

-They made the building larger and still missed God.

-Was this what Haggai promised—more stone, more gold, and a bigger complex?

-No. God provides glory in a place the powerful world hardly notices.

-Do not look first at the shining stones in Jerusalem. Look toward Bethlehem.

-There’s God’s sanctuary. God has come to live with his people.

-John chooses his words carefully.

-The Word “dwelt” among us. He tabernacled among us. God pitched His tent in human flesh.

-And John says, “We beheld His glory.”

-The glory promised by Haggai did not arrive as another cloud in Herod’s sanctuary. The glory walked among us in Jesus Christ.

-Jesus didn’t come just to visit the temple. He came to replace it.

-The Jews are looking at stone. Jesus is speaking about His body.

-He is where heaven and earth meet. He is where sacrifice is offered. He is where forgiveness is found. He is the way sinful people enter the presence of a holy God.

-At the cross, the true temple is destroyed by men and raised by God in three days.

-The veil tears from top to bottom. The guarded way is opened by the blood of Christ.

-We come to God through his Son, not through a sacred building.

-Those who are joined to Christ become His body. That is why the New Testament can call the church God’s temple.

-We are not a pile of private, disconnected stones.

-God is fitting us together. The church is a people among whom God lives by His Spirit.

-Acts 2 sounds like another temple-filling scene: a rushing wind fills the house, fire rests upon the apostles, the Spirit is poured out, and the gospel goes to the nations.

-God is taking up residence in His new-covenant people.

-But the story doesn’t end with the church as we know it now.

-The tabernacle was a copy. The temple was a copy. Even our life together now is a foretaste of the perfect dwelling still to come.

-So we return to the question with which we began: What is the tabernacle doing in heaven?

-Everything lost in Eden returns, only greater.

-God is with His people. The curse is gone. The river of life flows. The tree of life appears again. There is no death, sorrow, crying, or pain.

-And then John says something surprising.

-John hears about God’s tabernacle, but then he sees no temple building.

-Why? Because a building marks off holy space from common space. A veil says some are near while others must remain outside.

-In the new creation, no part of the city is common or unclean. There’s no guarded room and no curtain keeping us back.

-God and the Lamb are the temple. God’s glory fills everything.

-The Bible begins with humanity in God’s presence and ends with redeemed humanity in God’s presence.

-Between those two gardens stands a tabernacle, a temple, an empty house, a cross, and an open tomb.

-This theme tells us what salvation is for.

-God forgives us so he can bring us home. He saves us from judgment so we can live in fellowship with him.

-And the way home is Jesus.

-If you are outside Christ, you are still east of Eden. But the guarded way has been opened. The true temple was torn down and raised again. His blood gives us confidence to draw near.

-If you are in Christ, remember who we are. We are God’s dwelling place. Let us be holy. Let us protect the unity of His house. Let us show the world what it looks like when God lives among His people.

-And when sorrow, sickness, and death remind us that we are not home yet, hold on to the promise.

-One day faith will become sight.

-The glory will never depart again.

-God Himself will be with us.

-That is what the tabernacle is doing in heaven.