The tabernacle and Christ

The Holy Place

In the tabernacle of Moses · Exodus 25 to 40 · The first room

The holy place was the first room of the tent, entered by the priests daily, furnished with the golden lampstand, the table of showbread, and the altar of incense. Behind these three pieces of golden furniture, light, bread, and rising prayer went on continually before God. Together they picture the life of fellowship with God that Christ opens to his people.

Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary.Hebrews 9:1 (KJV)

What the holy place was

Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary. So the book of Hebrews begins its description of the tent, and it lists the first room's furniture: the candlestick, and the table, and the shewbread; which is called the sanctuary, or holy place. This was the outer of the tent's two rooms, screened from the court by an embroidered curtain at the door and from the innermost room by the heavy veil.

Its walls were boards of acacia overlaid with gold, its ceiling the woven curtains with their cherubim, and its only light the seven flames of the golden lampstand, for no daylight entered. Here, in the golden glow, the priests served every day: tending the lamps, setting out the bread, and burning incense on the golden altar before the veil.

What it meant for Israel

The holy place was for the priests, not the ordinary worshiper. Having passed the altar and the laver, the priest entered a room where everything spoke of nearness and communion. There was light to see by, bread on the table as if for a meal in God's house, and the fragrance of incense filling the air. It was the picture of a life lived in God's presence, sustained, illuminated, and given to prayer.

Yet even here the way was not fully open. The veil still hung at the far end, and beyond it the glory. The priest could serve in the holy place, but he could not pass the veil into the most holy place; only the high priest could, and only once a year. The holy place was real fellowship, but fellowship still short of the full and open access that was to come.

How it points to Christ

The three pieces of furniture each open onto Christ in their own pages, and the New Testament grounds each: the lampstand recalls his word, I am the light of the world; the bread recalls his word, I am the bread of life; and the incense recalls the prayers of the saints and the intercession Christ now makes for us. The holy place gathers them into a single scene of communion with God.

Under the old covenant that communion was for priests alone and remained veiled. Under the new covenant Christ has made every believer a priest, so that we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and has opened the way through the veil, which is his flesh, into the very presence of God. The daily life pictured in the holy place, walking in his light, feeding on him as the bread, praying in his name, is now the ordinary life of every Christian.

So the holy place is not one object but a room full of grace, the middle ground between the altar where sin is dealt with and the mercy seat where God is enthroned. It is where the forgiven live: in the light, at the table, before the rising incense, in fellowship with the God who came to dwell among his people.

A room of gold and living service

Everything in the holy place was gold, or gave light, or gave off fragrance, or fed the priests, and all of it was in constant use. This was not a museum but a working room, tended morning and evening, day after day, without a break. The lamps were trimmed and filled, the bread was set out fresh and the old eaten, the incense was renewed on the coals. Fellowship with God in the tabernacle was never idle; it was a life of daily, faithful attention, and that has not changed.

The three pieces of furniture answer three needs of the soul that Christ meets still. We need light to see, and he is the light of the world. We need bread to live, and he is the bread of life. We need our prayers to be heard, and he is the one who ever lives to intercede for us. The holy place gathers up the whole inner life of a believer: to walk in his light, to feed on him, and to pray in his name, in the golden glow of his presence.

But the deepest thing about the holy place is what still stood at its far end: the veil. For all its light and bread and fragrance, the room was not the innermost place, and the priest could go no further. It was real communion under a real limit, fellowship that still had a curtain drawn across its heart. That limit is exactly what Christ removed, so that the daily life once shut up to priests behind an embroidered door is now the open inheritance of everyone who is his. What was a privileged room has become the ordinary dwelling of the whole family of God.

Where heaven and earth met each day

The holy place was, in a sense, the meeting of two worlds. Its ceiling was the woven curtains with their cherubim, so that a priest standing within looked up, as it were, into heaven, and its floor was the desert ground of a pilgrim people. Between them stood gold and light and bread and fragrant smoke: earth lifted up toward heaven, and heaven bending down toward earth. It was a small daily picture of what God had always intended, that the two should not stay apart.

In Christ that meeting is complete. He is himself heaven and earth joined, God and man in one person, and through him the ordinary days of ordinary people are filled with the presence of God. The believer no longer needs a curtained room to find the light, the bread, and the rising prayer; he carries them into kitchen and street and workplace, for the God who dwelt in the holy place now dwells by his Spirit in his people. Every common day has become holy ground.

Hebrews 9 explicitly names the holy place and its furniture as part of the sanctuary that was a figure of Christ. The specific fulfillment of each item (light, bread, incense) is treated on its own page, where the strength of each link, explicit or devotional, is noted honestly.

Related: The golden lampstand · The table of showbread · The altar of incense · The whole tabernacle