God Pitching His Tent
Post #39 in the queue

Hear the herald's claim in full. God did not wait for men to build Him a house, and He did not accept a house built on man's design. He gave the design Himself, He commanded the tent Himself, He filled it with His own glory, and then He came in flesh and pitched that tent among us, so that the dwelling begun in the wilderness ends with God dwelling with men forever. Exodus does not begin with Israel's search for God. It begins with God's decision to dwell.

Begin where the dwelling is first commanded, for the command sets the whole direction. God tells Moses that the people are to make Him a sanctuary, so that He may dwell among them, and that the tabernacle and all its furnishings are to be made exactly according to the pattern He will show on the mountain (Ex 25:8-9; Ex 25:40). Mark the order, because the order is the doctrine. Israel does not first become worthy and then receive a dwelling. God first declares that He will dwell, and then He gives the shape of His dwelling. The initiative is entirely His, and the design is entirely His. The pattern was shown, not invented, and obedience meant following what was shown.

That matters because a tent built by man's wisdom would have been a monument to man's religion. A tent built by God's pattern is a witness to God's purpose. The people had just come out of Egypt, and they carried Egypt in their hearts. A people like that cannot design a house for the Holy One. If God is to dwell among them, God must tell them how. The tabernacle is therefore not Israel's offering to God. It is God's condescension to Israel, drawn in wood and cloth and gold, so that a camp of sinners could learn what holiness looks like when it pitches its tent in their midst.

Follow the furniture inward, and the tent teaches its own theology. At the center stands the ark, and inside the ark lies the testimony, the law written on stone (Ex 25:10-16; Ex 25:21). The law is not posted outside the tent as a ladder for climbers. It is placed inside, under a lid, in the darkest room, where only blood can approach it. That placement says what the law itself says: it is holy and just and good, and it shuts every mouth, because by works of the law no flesh is justified (Rom 3:19-20; Rom 7:12).

Above the ark is the covering itself, the mercy seat, with two cherubim spreading their wings over it (Ex 25:17-22). God promises to meet Moses there and speak to him from between the cherubim. The meeting place is not beside the law, and not apart from the law. It is over the law, where blood will be sprinkled once a year on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:14-15). Mercy does not cancel the law by ignoring it. Mercy covers the law by blood. It is command covered, guilt answered, wrath met by a substitute. God set Christ forth as the propitiation in His blood (Rom 3:25). The golden lid was the figure. The Man is the substance.

Step back out into the holy place, and two more pieces preach the same gospel in daily form. The lampstand burns continually, seven lamps of pure gold, and the table holds the bread of the Presence, set before Him continually (Ex 25:23-40; Ex 27:20-21; Lev 24:5-9). Israel did not light its own way through the wilderness, and Israel did not feed itself there. Light burned by oil God provided, and bread was set out from grain God grew. A lamp a man kindles for himself goes out. Bread a man bakes for his own soul does not satisfy. The lampstand and the table together confess dependence: man lives by light he does not generate and by bread he does not supply. Christ names Himself the light of the world, and the bread that came down from heaven, and He who believes in Him has eternal life now, as present possession, not as wages to be earned (John 6:35; John 6:47; John 8:12).

Yet even after sacrifice, even after light and bread, a curtain remained. The veil hung between the holy place and the most holy place, woven with cherubim, the guardians who stood at the gate of Eden after the fall (Ex 26:31-33; Gen 3:24). It said that God is here, and you are not yet admitted. The way into the holiest was not open while the first tent still stood in its daily order (Heb 9:8). A priest could serve in the holy place every day, and still not pass the veil except once a year, with blood not his own, and with fear. Nearness granted, access withheld, a way promised but not yet opened. The real veil could only be torn from above.

That is exactly how it was torn. When Christ died, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Matt 27:51). From top to bottom, not from bottom to top. No hand in the crowd reached up and ripped it. The hand that tore it came down. The writer to the Hebrews gives the meaning without softening it: the new and living way runs through the veil, that is to say, His flesh (Heb 10:19-20). His flesh was torn, so the veil was torn. His body was the curtain, and His death was the opening. No man opened the way by becoming better. God opened the way by giving His Son to be torn open. That is why there is boldness now to enter, and why that boldness rests on blood, not on progress (Heb 10:19).

All of this gathers in the sentence John writes at the head of his Gospel. In the World English Bible it reads: "The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The verb John chooses is the verb of the tent. The Word did not merely visit. He pitched His tent among us. The same glory that filled the tabernacle at its setting up, so that Moses could not enter, now dwelt in a Man who could be seen and heard and touched. In the World English Bible, that filling is recorded plainly: "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Yahweh filled the tent" (Ex 40:34). At Sinai the glory filled a tent and kept Moses out. In Galilee the glory filled a Man and drew sinners near.

Read the tent backward from that Man, and every piece finds its name. The ark pointed to the throne where law and mercy meet, and Christ is that meeting. The mercy seat pointed to blood covering transgression, and Christ is that blood. The lampstand pointed to light man did not kindle, and Christ is that light. The table pointed to bread man did not bake for himself, and Christ is that bread. The veil pointed to separation God Himself must end, and Christ is that ending, His flesh torn and the way opened. He is not one item in the inventory. He is the pattern Moses saw on the mountain, now made flesh. Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands, a figure of the true, but heaven itself, to appear before God for us, as High Priest of the true tabernacle the Lord pitched, not man (Heb 8:1-2; Heb 9:24). The earthly tent was the copy. The heavenly reality is a Priest who is also the sacrifice, offering Himself once, and then sitting down because the work is finished (Heb 9:11-12; Heb 10:11-14).

That finished work is why the tent does not end in the wilderness, and why it does not end in a building. It ends in a city, and the city is a bride. John hears the end in the same tent language, and in the World English Bible it sounds like this: "I heard a loud voice out of heaven saying, 'Behold, God's tent is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God'" (Rev 21:3). The tent pitched in the middle of a camp becomes the dwelling that covers a city. The glory that filled a tent so that no man could enter fills a city so that no temple is needed, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple (Rev 21:22). The Lamb is its light (Rev 21:23), and the servants shall see His face (Rev 22:4). The tent has done its work. It pointed to Christ, and Christ has brought His people home.

So the question the tabernacle asks is still the question every religion asks and cannot answer: how can a holy God dwell with unholy men? The tent answers it in order. Not by God overlooking sin. Not by man improving himself. Not by a bargain in which man builds and God moves in. By God commanding the dwelling, God giving the pattern, God providing the blood, God tearing the veil, God becoming flesh, and God dwelling with His people forever. Man did not pitch the tent. God pitched His tent. Man did not kindle the light. Christ is the light. Man did not bake the bread. Christ is the bread. Man did not open the veil. Christ is the way opened through His flesh. And he who believes in Him has eternal life now (John 6:47), because he already dwells in the One who tabernacled among us. God gives the increase Himself.