Service on the Tabernacle

October 16, 2005

Scriptures: Exodus 25 through Leviticus

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

  

The word “tabernacle” means “dwelling place.”

After God led the Israelites out of Egypt, after God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, God told Moses to create a tabernacle for him.  The tabernacle was a special tent where God would dwell with God’s people. 

We have replicated this very same tabernacle in the sanctuary today.  The bible has very specific, and long and boring details how to make the tabernacle.  What color cloth to use.  What kind of wood.  The exact dimension.  The exact height of the tables.  Where things are to be placed.  Who is suppose to put them there.  When they are suppose to do these things.  Today we have followed these instructions that were in the Bible.  Of course they are simplified, but the basic components are here.   We are going to experience today how our spiritual ancestors worshiped.

God led the people through the wilderness making God’s divine presence evident by the pillar of cloud and fire which they followed.  When  it stopped they stopped.  They would set up the tabernacle, and this “shekenah” or holy presence, this cloud would descend upon it. 

The tabernacle had two parts.  It was a tent within a tent.  The outer part some were allowed to enter.  But the inner part, the most holy of holies, only the high priest was allowed to enter. 

The Israelites believed that the tent was a map of creation itself.  The outer tent was the world.  The inner tent was heaven.  The symmetry and wholeness of the tabernacle were suppose to reflect the unity and perfection of God and God’s relationship to all of creation. 

Today we will be walking through the rituals that they performed there.  In our modern world, and especially to our Protestant ears, the word ritual conveys the idea of something old, ceremonial, superstitious such as stepping over a crack in the side walk, or refusing to walk under a ladder. 

But rituals are way more than that.  Rituals are a way of acting  out what people believe life and God is all about.  In symbols and in the gestures the priests enact the way the world should be.  They express this ideal world not with words, but with sounds, sacrifice, smoke, gold, bread, cleansing. 

Rituals are human nature.  Birthday candles, Christmas stockings, Thanksgiving turkey these are all modern rituals.  Life would not be the same without them. 

Moreover, ritual are embedded in our deepest psychology.  Rituals are like waking dreams.  Our dreams are loaded with symbols and gestures that convey meaning and power.  A woman has depression and dreams that she lights a candle to the heel of her golden slippers and flies.   

I don’t know how this service is going to turn out.  I don’t know anyone who has done this in a church service before.  But at least you won’t forget it.  The kids will never forget the tabernacle as long as they live. 

Why is it important to remember?  Because the temple in Jerusalem that Jesus went to was built on the model of the tabernacle.  More than that, because of Jesus worship in the tabernacle would never ever be the same again.  The New Testament declares:

Christ became a  high priest of a greater reality than one conveyed in the tabernacle.  Christ initiated a relationship with God  that was even better than the one that came with Moses and the ten commandments.  Christ bypassed the outer tent that represents the world and went strait into the inner tent that represents the  Holy of Holies, “heaven’s tent.”  He went there once and for all.  He didn’t have to keep going in every year like the old priests had to..   He also could bypass the sacrifices of goats and calves and their blood.  Instead, Christ used his own blood through his crucifixion to free us once and for all.  (Hebrews 9 adapted)

We have to understand what happened in the tabernacle to understand the profound shift in belief, worship, and presence of God that was brought about by Christ and Christianity. 

  

I.                    Purification

We are about to enter the tabernacle where God dwells with the Israelites.  But it was believed that you couldn’t just walk up to God because it would contaminate God.  You had to be pure like God is pure.   They believed that the holiness of God must be protected from the impure.

Like dust and dirty dishes, life always reverts to impurity.  It is an uphill battle to stay clean for the Israelites.  Washing was a symbol of how to stay clean before God.  But we are not just talking about purity of our bodies.  We are also talking about purity of our moral behavior.  The prophet Isaiah writes Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes (Is 1:16)

The Old Testament takes purity more literally than the New Testament.  When the Pharisees challenges Jesus’ casual attitude toward ritual washing of hands, Jesus ays that “whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach…It is what comes out of a person that defiles (Mk 7:18-20)

For the Old Testament the essence of God is purity.  But, for Jesus that changes significantly.  The essence of God for Jesus is love and mercy.  In the Old Testament to be like God you had to be increasingly pure.  In the New Testament to be like God you had to be increasingly loving and compassionate.  Even today, people get it mixed up.  Today, many Christians exclude some people because they don’t think they are moral enough, or live the right life style, or have the correct beliefs.  This is all purity thinking.  This is not Jesus.  If you love the most, you are the one most like God. 

But I do not want to disparage the importance of the moral component to purity.  For the Israelites, unlike many of the other religions in the region, worshiping God could not be distinguished from living an ethical life.  Remember the rules of right and wrong  were given by God to Moses in the Ten Commandments along with instructions to the tabernacle.

Fire is also a symbol of God’s purity and presence.   Only the purified priests are allowed to go near.  These today, will be our children.  Who have their priestly robes on. 

Because everyone else is impure, when we enter the Tabernacle, you will have to all sit in the back two pews and come no farther until we tell you.  Let us pray…

  

II.                 Presence of God

With the tabernacle complete, God’ Presence leaves Mount Sinai where Moses had climbed to get the Ten Commandments and takes up its abode amidst the Israelites fulfilling God’s promise.  From the tabernacle and especially the Holy of Holies, the “Tent of Meeting” God would meet with Moses and accompany the Israelites on their journeys. 

It was very important for the Israelites to have God’s presence among them every day and they must live and worship in such a way to make that possible.  With God’s presence they would have continual blessing.  Without God’s presence they would be cursed. 

In the Old Testament God promised, “I will be with you” in times of danger and uncertainty.  But Jesus extended that promise.  He said, “When two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them (Matt 18:20)”  And, when he was resurrected and was about to ascend to heaven.  Jesus said, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt 28:20)”    We believe that God’s presence is not in the tabernacle but is in our hearts.

 

III.               Priests

I want to give our priests here their Urim and Thummim.  Remember when God told Moses to put Urim and Thummin in the breatpiece of the priests?  What on earth does that mean?

No one quite knows.  But they were some sort of divination tools.  Does anyone here have a black 8 ball that you ask a question, you shake it and it will come up with an answer?  That is divination.  Divination, is trying to tell what the future holds by reading into things that are happening now.  So, I have in these pockets your own Urim and Thummin.  These are two marbles…  You ask yes/no questions, close your eyes and the color that comes out will be the answer.

The Urim and Thummim was a device of some sort for obtaining God’s decision on important question on which our judgment fell short.  Questions like when and how to go to war, allocation of land, legal verdicts, and choice of leaders. 

From this priests were not only important in worship, but were more and more drawn upon to give advice.  They eventually turned into the judges of Israel. 

Would someone like to ask a yes/no question to one of the priests?

Before we go any further into the holy temple, we priests must wash ourselves so that we are pure before God.  Let’s do that by rinsing our hands with this water  And drying them with this towel.  We will wash our hands so that we are clean and pure before God.

 

Prayer for the priests…

  

IV.              What’s the Purpose of Sacrifice

This is probably the weirdest part of the service for everyone.  People use to sacrifice a lamb, or another animal to God.  They would kill it for God.  We never do that.  It seems mean, and well weird.

Why did they do that?  Well, in many of the neighboring tribes and religions people sacrificed to their god in order to win favors, or to actually feed their god.  The Israelites at first look like they are doing the same thing.  But, they have an important twist.  Instead of feeding god they use sacrifices as gifts to honor God.  They meant that we owe everything to God.  A lamb or an ox was very valuable to the people.  It was important for them to live.  To give this lamb to God meant that they were willing to give up anything for their God.  It is like giving God your favorite toy.  This would be hard to do.

But sacrifices do something else too.  When people did things that they knew were against the law of God, something that was wrong, they would make a sacrifice in order to tell God they were sorry.  This is called “atonement.”  The worshiper would place his hands on the head of the animal and that would signify that that animal in someway represented him.  The animal was taking the punishment for him.  This was seen as a kind of justice.  A kind of making right what had gone wrong.

They believed that the sins of people violated the holiness of God and brought the sentence of death.  This death could only be averted by a death of another.  This was the scapegoat or scapesheep.  This was the substitution of an animal for a person.  Through blood sacrifice sinful people were able to receive the blessing of God instead of his judgment.   I know that sounds funny to us, but there is t\was. 

This is the most gruesome part.  The blood of the animal would be sprinkled on the altar because “the life of the flesh is in the blood; as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.”  (Lev. 17:11)

Christ served as both the high priest and victim (Heb 9:11-12)  He did this by offering himself to God because they believed that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”  This all goes back to the way they worshiped in the tabernacle.  By sacrificing himself through his death it is believe that Christ fulfilled the roles of the “suffering servant” found in Isaiah 53 and of the scapegoat that was sacrificed in the tabernacle. 

In the New Testament Christians are to live a life of sacrifice to God by their conduct.  Paul says “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (Rom 12:1)”

Who wants to sacrifice this pretend lamb by pulling its head away from its body?

Let us pray….

  

V.                 What’s So Great About the Ark?

Isn’t this cool in here.  This is the Ark of the Covenant.  It is a special box that the Israelites carries the things that was most special to them.

What kind of things do you carry in your back packs?  Those things are important to you for school.  Let’s see what’s in the box…

But wait…this doesn’t’ seem fair.  Us priests in here and all those people out their not being able to see what is going on.  I know, I know, we are pure and they are impure.  But, it just doesn’t seem fair.

What should we do?

But, we can’t do that because we are in God’s presence and you have to be pure.

But, wait, maybe something has changed out there.  Lets look and see what has changed.  (they look and see the cross on the sacrifice table.)

After Jesus we didn’t have to sacrifice anymore.  And people could come and go in the presence of God, even if they were unpure, because Jesus is our high priest.  When he died the curtain of the Holy of Holies was torn in two.  It was ripped from top to bottom, so their was no longer anything separating people from God.

Let’s lift up these curtains and let people see what is here!

This is the ark of the covenant.  It is made to exact specifications.  So this is how it really looked.  There are two angels on top of it.  This is to protect people from God and God from people.  Also, thrones of kings in the middle east had angels supporting them like this, so this is suppose to be the throne of God.  The shekina, the spirit of God would reside on this box…can we have some smoke now?  This is where Moses would meet God. 

Big thing to notice is that there is no statue of God here.  There is just a box.  There is no gold statue of a person like figure, that is suppose to be a God.  Other people in the same area would have tabernacles like this and a tent like this, but inside the tent wouldn’t be a box but a statue of a god.    This is because God of Israel is not just one among many others.  This God is really different.  This God is not just a god that controls only a few square miles.  Leave that area and then you are in the territory of a different God.  This God goes with you where ever you God.  This God is the Alpha god and a jealous God. 

Here we are beginning to move from polytheism, the belief of many gods, to monotheism, the belief in one God.  With polytheism the world is full of little gods that are fighting with each other all the time.  With polytheism people would try to get magical powers to intervene in the fighting and romances and whatever that was going on between the gods.  God were things to be appeased or defended against.  But, with monotheism the big issue was no longer appeasing these little gods.  With monotheism the big issue was the forces of life and death set loose by people through is obedience to or defiance of a God who created the universe and gave them the ten commandments.   (Leviticus, Interpretation:  A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching by Samuel Balentine).

(Back to the kids)  So what do you carry in your back packs.  This was like their back pack they would carry this ark wherever they would go.  Plus, they would take it with them even when they went to war.   This was to make sure God was on their side. 

Let’s look in the box.  Take out manna, Aaron's rod and most important the ten commandments.

Also then share with them their own God boxes.  We will be giving something once a month to put in their God boxes. 

But, we shouldn’t just be up here all alone.  Let’s have the other people in the back pews now come on up.  We are all priests now.  There are not just a select few of us who are more pure and more holy than others.  Because of Jesus we are all a royal priesthood, and a holy nation belonging to God. 

Everyone come up and we will say a prayer up here together in the Holy of Holies, the Tent of Meeting, the place where Heaven meets earth and God dwells among us. 

Prayer

Scripture reading

 

VI.              Ending

This is the end.  We are going to process out.

The music is going to start.  The adult can go to a pew in the front grab a hymnal and start singing.

We are going to go out in a line. 

1)      Someone carry the cross from the table out first.

2)       Four people carry the ark out.

3)      The children follow with their God boxes.