Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Little over one chapter was needed to describe the structure of the world, but six were used for the tabernacle. So it should sort of startle us a little bit. The creation has just a scant amount in the whole overall teaching of Scripture as compared to the tabernacle. Something's going on here. Something's very important for us.
So what is going on with the tabernacle in the Old Testament? And why did God take so much time describing it? Stay with us for Renewing Your Mind, as that's what we'll consider today and tomorrow. The Old Testament can sometimes be hard to read. The context is very different than today. There are descriptions and prescriptions that seem foreign to us.
And when we get to Exodus and start reading elaborate details about this tent, this tabernacle, we might be tempted to skip over these chapters. But if we did, we would miss out on truths that the Lord gave to His people in His Word. To close out this week, you'll hear two messages from our guest teacher's 12-part series, God in Our Midst, The Tabernacle, and Our Relationship with God.
Daniel Hyde recorded this series and wrote the companion book, and we'll send you both when you give a donation in support of Renewing Your Mind at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tomorrow. Here's Dr. Hyde, the pastor of Oceanside United Reformed Church in Carlsbad, California.
I want to ask you a question to begin with, just in terms of your own understanding of the Lord, your salvation, and your relationship with Him. What's the best biblical truth, the best key biblical passage or teaching that you would look to in order to understand your salvation? Possibly you would think about the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, God, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.
Perhaps the best place to start would be the life of Jesus Christ. Think about his incarnation, his life of obedience to the law of God, his death, resurrection, ascension. Perhaps for some of us, it would be the book of Romans.
And we look to the first part, which deals with our sin, our guilt, the meat of the book, which deals with our salvation and the grace of God, and finally, which deals with gratitude, how we are to be thankful to God for his redemption. Now, what if I asked you, thinking about your salvation, looking to Scripture for how we are to understand it, to limit yourself just to the Old Testament?
So no New Testament teaching, just an Old Testament figure or a story or a book.
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Chapter 2: What significance does the tabernacle hold in the Old Testament?
Where would you look to understand your relationship with God? Maybe you'd think about Abraham and the covenant that God made with him. Perhaps the Exodus and the great drama and the story of how God liberates his people. Perhaps you'd think about the Psalms and those 150 prayers and songs that God gave to his people.
Chapter 3: Why did God spend so much time describing the tabernacle?
Well, I want to lead you in a study of your salvation, your relationship with God, in terms of the Old Testament tabernacle. Not necessarily the best place to begin. 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. How does it fit into the story, the overall picture of what God was doing and what he was going to do with his people? The tabernacle, as it falls in the book of Exodus, takes place in three geographical places, the book of Exodus does.
The first part of Exodus deals with the Lord's people where they were left off in Genesis. They were in Egypt. They were there from chapters 1 to 13 in exile, awaiting to be liberated and given the promises made to Abraham.
After leaving Egypt in the dark of night in the great Passover story, they proceeded throughout the wilderness, and they eventually, as they wandered there for a couple of chapters, 14 through 18, they finally come to Mount Sinai.
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Chapter 4: How does the tabernacle illustrate our relationship with God?
If you don't have the New Testament, you don't have the second volume, the first volume's incomplete. You're not able to understand it. What's it saying? Why is it saying it? Where is it going? And so forth. St. Augustine once wrote with that in mind. He said that in the Old Testament, the New Testament is concealed. But in the New Testament, the Old Testament is revealed.
So we have in the Old Testament and the New Testament hidden. We have the truths of the New Testament, but yet they're, as we'll see, in what are called types and shadows. It's very dark, not quite as clear yet. But as we come to the New Testament, we begin to see that the Old Testament makes sense. It comes to light, and it shows us the Savior. Hebrews chapter 1 tells us that very same thing.
If you want to turn there with me, Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, where we see the relationship between what God said in the Old Testament and what he now says to us in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He tells us that long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our forefathers by the prophets. So Old Testament, the big part of your Bible, the first two-thirds of it.
Many times, many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets back then. But now in these last days, he says, he has spoken to us by his son. And then he goes on to describe the son, who he is. He's the heir. He's the creator. He's the radiance of God's glory. He made purification for sins and so forth. The Bible comes to its culmination into its conclusion in Jesus Christ.
And so we must read the tabernacle with him in mind. What's it saying about him? How is it saying that? Where is it going? The apostle Paul tells us that if we read the word of God, the Old Testament especially, apart from Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit, it's like having a veil over your eyes. Again, you read it with darkness. It's obscure. It doesn't quite make much sense.
But yet now we have the coming of the Savior, and he's poured out upon us on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit. He now reveals to us, Paul says elsewhere, the deep things of God. So he tells us, for example, in 2 Corinthians 3, that when the Old Testament is read, the Old Covenant is read, there's a veil over the eyes of those who are in unbelief. But yet we have the Spirit now.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. And so we all with unveiled face behold the glory of the Lord and are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. And he says, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. So read your Old Testament. Read the tabernacle story with me. Having the veil of unbelief removed,
And then having a pair of glasses put on that help you to understand the fullness of what's going on there. And that leads to a fourth principle. That we are to read the Old Testament, especially the tabernacle, as fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Recall what Jesus said to the Pharisees as they searched the scriptures. And he rebukes them because they thought that in them they had everlasting life.
But these are those that testify about me. He's rebuking them because they thought in all the obscure details and knowing all the ins and outs that that was saving. No, in fact, he says these must lead to me. And so Jesus Christ is like the key that unlocks the door for us to then enter the Old Testament. and begin to stand in awe and wonder.
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