Daniel Hyde

or the only place to begin, but a good place to begin nonetheless, that deals with the triune God, our sins, his amazing grace, how we are to serve him.

This is a good challenge for us to start with the tabernacle or to go to the tabernacle because many Christians, and no doubt Christians,

putting ourselves in that bucket of people.

We're unfamiliar with the Old Testament.

We don't know it as well as we know our New Testaments.

One survey I read once kind of illustrates this, where evangelical Christians, professing believers in America, were asked various questions about their Bible knowledge.

And one of the questions was, who is Noah's wife?

Take a wild guess at what the answer was.

Joan of Arc, of course.

It just illustrates how little people know about their Old Testament and their Bible knowledge.

So in this first session, I want to begin to introduce you to the tabernacle, what it is, how it fits into the big story and picture of God's revelation of his saving grace and how it points us to our relationship with our triune God.

So what was the tabernacle?

Well, it was this temporary tent that existed from the time of Moses at Mount Sinai for about 400 years until King Solomon came and built the lasting structure of the temple.

And the tabernacle has several names in Hebrew.

Scripture, it's called the sanctuary, signifying that it's a holy place, sanctuary for holy.

It's called the tent of the Lord.

It's the place where God temporarily dwelt like in a tent, just like his people dwelt in tents.

It's called the tent of the testimony because the testimony is another way of describing the Ten Commandments, the tables of the law, and those are placed inside of the ark, which was inside the tent.

It's also called the tent of meeting, the place where the Lord met with his people face-to-face as with friends.

That's what the tabernacle was.