The tabernacle and Christ

The Tabernacle of Moses

In the tabernacle of Moses · Exodus 25 to 40 · The whole pattern

The tabernacle was the tent God told Moses to build so that he might dwell among his people, made exactly after a pattern shown to Moses on the mountain. The New Testament plainly teaches that the whole of it, its courts, its furniture, its priesthood, and its sacrifices, was a shadow of good things to come whose substance is Christ, who has now entered the true sanctuary, heaven itself, on our behalf.

And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.Exodus 25:8 (KJV)

What the tabernacle was

After God brought Israel out of Egypt and met them at Sinai, he gave Moses a startling instruction: Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. The word sanctuary means a holy place, and the tent that Israel built is called in Scripture the tabernacle, from a word that simply means a dwelling. It was a portable temple, a tent of curtains and boards that could be taken down and carried as the people journeyed through the wilderness, and set up again wherever they camped, always at the center of the tribes.

The tabernacle had three parts, growing in holiness as one moved inward. First was the outer court, a large open enclosure fenced with linen hangings, entered by a single gate, holding the bronze altar of sacrifice and the bronze laver for washing. Within the court stood the tent itself, and the tent had two rooms. The first was the holy place, lit by the golden lampstand and furnished with the table of showbread and the altar of incense. Beyond a heavy veil lay the second room, the most holy place, a perfect cube containing only the ark of the covenant with its golden mercy seat, where the visible glory of God dwelt. Only the high priest could enter there, and only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, and never without blood.

The pattern shown to Moses

Nothing about the tabernacle was left to human imagination. God gave Moses the design in exact detail, and warned him twice to build strictly to specification: According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it. The book of Hebrews returns to this again and again, quoting God's charge to Moses, See, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. The tabernacle was a copy of a reality that already existed in heaven.

This is why the tabernacle can be read as a picture of Christ without our inventing meanings. The New Testament tells us directly that it was designed to teach. Its priests, Hebrews says, serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things. A shadow is cast by a real body, and the body, Colossians says, is of Christ. So the tabernacle is not a code to be cracked by clever guessing; it is a God-given illustration whose main lines the New Testament itself draws for us.

What it meant for Israel

For Israel the tabernacle answered the deepest problem of their existence: how could a holy God live in the midst of a sinful people without destroying them? At Sinai the mountain had burned with fire and the people had trembled and begged that God not speak to them directly. The tabernacle was God's gracious answer. He would come down and dwell among them, but he would do so behind veils and by way of sacrifice and a mediating priesthood, so that his holiness would not consume them and their sin would not go unatoned.

When the tabernacle was finished, the glory came. A cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. God had kept his promise: he dwelt among them. Every part of the daily worship, the morning and evening sacrifice, the burning lamps, the fresh bread, the rising incense, declared that the way to God was open, but only by the means he had appointed, only by blood and priesthood and grace.

How it is fulfilled in Christ

The New Testament does not treat the tabernacle as a lovely antique. It treats it as a promise now kept. The book of Hebrews explains that the whole first sanctuary, with its repeated sacrifices that could never take away sin, was a figure for the time then present, pointing forward to a better priest and a better sacrifice. Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, entered in once by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

The clearest word of all is in John's Gospel, which says that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. The Greek behind dwelt means literally that he pitched his tent among us, and we beheld his glory. Everything the tabernacle pictured, God dwelling with his people, the glory hidden and revealed, the way to the Father opened by sacrifice, has come to rest in a person. The tent has become a man, and the man is Jesus.

This overview is the doorway. Each part of the tabernacle, the altar where the victim died, the laver where the priests washed, the lampstand that never went out, the bread always fresh before God, the incense rising like prayer, the veil that hid the glory, the ark, the mercy seat sprinkled with blood, and the high priest who carried the names of the people into God's presence, opens onto Christ. The pages that follow walk them one by one, from the gate to the ark, and keep to what Scripture actually says.

From Eden to the new Jerusalem

The tabernacle was one chapter in a story that runs from the first page of the Bible to the last. In the beginning God walked with man in the garden, and it was sin that drove them out and set cherubim to guard the way back to the tree of life. The tabernacle, with its own cherubim woven into the veil and hammered upon the mercy seat, was God's move back toward his people, a way to dwell among them again, though still behind a curtain. It was a tent, made to be carried, because God was willing to journey with a wandering people rather than wait for them to arrive.

In time the tent became a temple. When Israel was settled in the land, Solomon built in stone and cedar what Moses had built in curtains and boards, and the same glory that had filled the tabernacle came down and filled the temple. Yet even the temple was still a shadow: still veiled, still served by mortal priests, still needing sacrifice after sacrifice. Then, in the fullness of time, the shadow gave way to the substance. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and the true temple stood among men, for Jesus said of his own body, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

And the story is not finished, for God now makes his home in his people by the Spirit. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, Paul asks, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. The church is built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. At the very end John sees the goal of the whole Bible: the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, in a city that needs no temple, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. The little tent in the wilderness was a promise leaning toward the day when God and man would dwell together with nothing between. That day has dawned in Christ, and will be full when he comes.

The New Testament states plainly that the tabernacle as a whole was a shadow of Christ (Hebrews 8:5; 9:1-11; 10:1; Colossians 2:17), so this is explicit teaching, not guesswork. Where the New Testament names a particular object's fulfillment, the following pages say so; where a link is a devotional reflection drawn by later readers, they say that too.

Related: The bronze altar · The veil · Christ our High Priest · The whole tabernacle