(Photo by Juli Kosolapova on Unsplash)
Why do we need the Tabernacle?
In Exodus 26 and 27, we read about the Tabernacle, a collapsible worship tent whose architect is God himself. The primary reason for the Tabernacle can be found right there in the name—well, the Hebrew name at least.
See, the term most of us use, “tabernacle,” comes from the Latin word for “tent,” but it was used as a substitute for the Hebrew word mishkan.
Okay, what does mishkan mean?
That word literally means “dwelling place.”
This is huge. The Tabernacle was first and foremost a place where God dwelt with His people.
But, here is a common question we might have when approaching the Tabernacle in our Bibles: “Why do we still need this thing?”
The whole Bible is supposed to help me with life ... my life. Beyond historical record, why is this in our Bibles? Why do we need the Tabernacle?
In one sense, we don’t. Jesus fulfilled everything the tabernacle was given to do.
Yet, we still need the message the Tabernacle preached.
In Exodus 26 and 27, we see how the design plans for the Tabernacle move us through four core elements of the gospel: Creation, Rebellion, Redemption, and New Creation.
Creation:
In the beginning, God created, and it was good. There was HARMONY between God and humanity in the Garden of Eden.
Rebellion:
Humanity FORFEITED this harmony by elevating themselves above their Creator; they sinned and brought upon the entire human race the consequence of death and banishment from the Garden.
Redemption:
God so loved the world that He executed a plan to rescue us from the consequence of our sin—God stepped into humanity and SACRIFICED HIMSELF on our behalf. He paid our sin debt with His earned righteousness.
New Creation:
Today, in Christ, God is making ALL THINGS NEW. He is healing the world broken by sin. We are part of this work and will enjoy restored harmony with Him for all eternity.
In a prefigured way, the Tabernacle preached this ultimate paradigm to ancient Israel, and it can do the same thing for us today.
Let’s circle back to the source text.
Beginning in Exodus 26, we don’t just see blueprints; we observe instructions.
These passages aren’t just verbalizing a finished schematic. We get the step-by-step procedure—If we’re honest, they operate more like a Lego kit. Do this, then do that.
Here’s a breakdown (I encourage you to write these in the margins of your Bibles)
We’ve got seven major sections:
26:1-6 – curtains
26:7-14 – outer tent
26:15-30 – frames
26:31-37 – inner veil and the entrance
27:1-8 – the altar
27:9-19 – the courtyard
27:20-21 – oil for the lamp
This gives us the basic shape of the tabernacle, but how do we grasp its purpose? For this, we’ve got to key in on the design elements?
It’s in the design elements that we receive this message of the gospel.
1. The Tabernacle points to Creation.
As a rule of thumb, Exodus is riffing off the original tune supplied in the book of Genesis, and the Tabernacle section is no exception.
First, there’s intentionality to the colors of the tent—usually a combination of blue, purple, and scarlet. With these colors, we have royalty, perhaps the color of sacrifice, but also the color of the heavens.
Second, there’s intentionality to the direction the tabernacle faces. Length-wise, it runs from east to west. The opening to the tabernacle and the opening of the outer court (the gate) both faced east.
Third, there’s intentionality in the embroidery. The only artistic depiction on the tabernacle is the embroidery of angels—cherubim.
See, with these intentional features, God is intending to anchor our minds all the way back in the Garden of Eden.
(1) In Genesis 1 & 2, we see a picture of heaven meets earth, which is depicted in the particular colors of the curtains.
(2) In Genesis 3, the narrative turns. Instead of reading about how God created, we read about how we rebelled. The Garden is treated like a fortress, with its gate on the eastern side.
(3) This eastern gate is protected by an angel—a cherubim.
See, the Tabernacle is like a replica of the Garden of Eden. Later in Israel’s history, the Temple was this same principle on steroids.
God was creating spaces for His dwelling with humans. This is the narrative of creation.
The Garden was good because it was where God was. Banishment from the Garden was bad, not because we lost the Garden, but because we lost access to God.
God’s presence is His greatest gift to humanity, but because we live in active rebellion, His presence is appropriately sobering.
The Tabernacle reminds us of how things were supposed to be, but also, it reminds us that things are not that way anymore.
The Tabernacle points to Creation, but also ...
2. The Tabernacle points to the Rebellion.
Let’s look for a moment at the dimensions of the Tabernacle. What we see are three distinct zones that paint a really important picture.
Moving from the outermost to the innermost, we first have the outer court area, protected by a fence. It’s 50 yards long and 25 yards wide, (1/4 football field) and the fence is about 7.5 feet tall.
The outer court created a wide berth. It protected you from accidentally walking into the tent or through its curtain walls (you would be super dead if you did).
From the outer court, then, you move into the Tabernacle itself. The first room functioned kind of like a foyer. Here is where the lampstand and the bread table would be.
The Tabernacle itself, a tent, was constructed with something similar to modern-day pipe and drape.
This first room was about 30 feet long and 15 feet tall. This was the Holy Place.
Then, you have the innermost—the Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies. Think of this like the vault of a bank. This was a 15’x15’x15’ room, a perfect cube. Inside here, the ark of the covenant would reside—the fixture that represented God’s presence, and it was protected by a thick curtain called the veil.
All of this is intentional. All of this communicates. None of this is casual.
Okay, let’s go back to the cherubim.
After Adam and Eve sinned and were sent out, the gate to the Garden was protected by a cherubim with a flaming sword. Notice, the Tabernacle doesn’t depict cute little Cupids. These are death angels. Their presence is meant to warn those who would come near the intensity of God’s presence.
See, the Tabernacle is all about borders and barriers.
In the beginning, in the Garden, things were whole. And in an instant, everything changed.
Adam and Eve sinned, and to protect them from immediate and all-consuming wrath, God pushed them outside of His presence.
Again, God’s presence is amazing, but for anyone dripping in sin, it is terrifying.
Just as the Tabernacle is the means by which the people received the gift of God’s presence, it was also designed to protect them from the heat of His holiness.
The Tabernacle is a reminder that we can’t go back into the Garden.
The Tabernacle preaches that if we want to be near Yahweh, our sin has to be addressed.
Praise God—He has made a way. His heartbeat is love.
3. The Tabernacle points to Redemption.
First, let’s consider the altar in the courtyard.
I grew up in a church with an altar at the front of the room where you could kneel for prayer. That’s not this kind of altar. Think like an ancient fire pit.
Last Father’s Day, Kim and the kids got me one of those stainless steel fire pits with channels to move the oxygen where it’s needed and to cut down on smoke. It’s amazing—and the best part is that it came with this little grate so I can grill food on it.
The altar of the Tabernacle is kind of like that, but way bigger.
This altar was 7.5’ x 7.5’ and 4.5’ high. This is where Israel would place their burnt offerings. This was their most common reference point for dealing with their sin.
Let’s not blow past this detail: To deal with sin, they had to shed the blood of an animal—that animal served as a substitute.
That animal doesn’t deserve to be killed. We do.
But this is grace.
God accepts the animal in our place.
And this is exactly what we see back at the Garden.
Genesis 3:20-21.
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
To deal with their sin, but also to love them, God kills an animal on behalf of Adam and Eve—he receives that animal’s blood to satisfy the guilt penalty they had earned for themselves.
The altar would become a staple of Israel’s spiritual life. But also, the main tent itself functioned as an atonement headquarters.
Specifically, headquarters was the space behind the veil (Exodus 26:31-35).
This veil separated the foyer from the vault. It was the final barrier. You pass by the veil, you’re in the core. This zone was so intense, so special, only the High Priest could enter it, and He could only do it once a year. This is what we call the Day of Atonement (Lev 16).
See, Israel needed constant forgiveness and purification for their sins. Over and over again they had to kill animals and burn them on this altar.
On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would bring blood into the Most Holy Place to cleanse the Tabernacle.
Throughout the year, the Tabernacle is absorbing their sin as they make these sacrifices. Then on the Day of Atonement, it’s released—it’s taken away. The atonement center has been reset.
But this system was meant only as a shadow of something greater on the horizon.
Hebrews 10:1-4.
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. ... 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
The author of Hebrews is showing us that the Tabernacle was a mechanism for Redemption, but it couldn’t solve our sin problem once and for all.
Fast forward from Exodus: On the cross, Jesus dies as a willing sacrifice. What happens at the moment of his death? In the temple, the veil that guarded the Holy of Holies is ripped down the middle by God himself.
It’s as if, in this intense moment of grief and love, God tears down the curtain that has kept Him from the people He adores. Because God laid down his life as the sacrifice, He doesn’t have to hold back. He doesn’t have to guard us from His presence, from His glory.
He is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.
He has redeemed us to new life. His blood is sufficient.
And now that he has Redeemed, we can see him actively restoring this broken world.
4. The Tabernacle points to New Creation.
Here’s the beauty of what Christ is doing. Not only does he forgive our sins. By his blood, we are welcomed back to the Garden.
Remember—it’s all about the details; there’s intentionality in the precious metals used. Gold in the innermost, then silver, then bronze. Think about how Olympic medals communicate degrees of prestige and ranking.
Notice that the closer we move toward the innermost part of the tabernacle, the more precious the metals become.
This space is dazzling.
This is the vision we get in Ezekiel, and it’s the same vision we see in Revelation.
Revelation 21:10-16.
10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, 11 having the glory of God, (elsewhere described as a golden city, lined with jewels)
But here’s the cool part...
16 ... And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal.
A perfect cube.
This is the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle. This is the Holy of Holies in the Temple.
The City of God is the Holy of Holies come down for us to inhabit. In other words, in the new heavens and the new earth, God’s dwelling place isn’t confined to a location—the Garden has been expanded.
Revelation 21:22-26.
22 And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, 25 and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.
This is our hope.
This is the culmination of everything Jesus did 2,000 years ago and what he is doing now
We don’t need the Tabernacle to protect us from God.
We don’t need the Tabernacle to channel our sacrifices and mediate our worship.
We don’t need the Tabernacle to get right with God or to stay in His presence.
But we need what the Tabernacle preached.
We need the hope of Jesus.
When life is hard,
... when life doesn’t make sense,
... when our faith feels dry,
...we have these drum beats to go to: Creation, Rebellion, Redemption, New Creation.
Things are not the way they’re supposed to be—But we have hope that things are being healed.
—AND HE IS DOING IT THROUGH US.
In studying Exodus, I’ve been pondering the question: Why didn’t God just have Israel build a city around Mt. Sinai? Why this mobile tent?
Well, for one, God knew that Israel had a season of wilderness wandering ahead (they needed sanctification)
But, there’s more than that.
He wanted Israel to learn to move forward—to expand the Garden. To take the Tabernacle to the world.
We are God’s dwelling place. May we be faithful to invite others in.
